Vassar benefits from the partnership of the Davis United World College Scholars Program, which provides scholarship funding to financial aid-eligible Davis United World College Scholars—graduates of the 18 international UWC high schools attending more than 100 U.S. post-secondary partner institutions.

Jen Rubbo, Director of the Environmental Cooperative, received New York State grant funding to support Vassar’s Exploring Science program. Through this grant, local youth, ages 18–21, will be hired as interns to work alongside Vassar undergraduates and provide summer programming for PreK–12 students, including opportunities to learn about nature, “think like a scientist,” and engage with the Preserve.

Jenny Magnes, Professor of Physics, and Juan Merlo-Ramírez, Associate Professor of Physics, recently published a new book, Optical Interference and Dynamic Diffraction: Research methods for undergraduates. Their book introduces Dynamic Optical Diffraction (DOD), developed by Professor Magnes, and draws on both authors’ pedagogical experience to “fill in the elementary material often omitted from the literature on diffraction and Fourier transforms,” mathematical tools that help analyze signal frequencies.

Colette Salyk, Associate Professor of Astronomy, secured funding through the Space Telescope Science Institute for the study of planet formation with collaborators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Amitava Kumar, Professor of English, is author of the recently published The Social Life of Indian Trains (Aleph Book Company, 2025), part of Aleph’s “Essential India” series.

Paul Kane, Professor Emeritus of English, recently released “Intimations” (Modern Sounds, 2025), a music and poetry recording with the avant-garde jazz ensemble The String Trio of New York, led by guitarist James Emery.

Kelli Duncan, Associate Dean of the Faculty and Academic Resources and Professor of Biology on the Patricia Shoer Goldman-Rakic ’59 Professorship Chair, is serving as the scientific mentor for Daniel Tobiansky’s Rhode Island IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (RI-INBRE) Proposal Development Grant. She is providing hands-on mentorship for a project examining the spatial distribution of unique woodpecker tau (MAPT) transcript variants in woodpecker and songbird brains.

In What We Mourn: Child Death and the Politics of Grief in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Lydia captures an unfolding public reckoning, one where the scale of child mortality and human grief leads to a new culture of bereavement that shapes views about the role of the state as protector of rights, of children and others.