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Much of the work reflects the passions of bright, socially conscious, committed-to-making-the-world better students. The concerns that sparked their projects range from global warming to racial injustice to violence against women.

The symposium offers a window into the offerings of a college that stresses a broad liberal arts education.

Computer science major Michael Adenew ’24 will join classmates in a presentation connecting the readings from an African American literature class to С����Ƶ’s troubled history of slavery. He says learning about that past is crucial to resolving social problems that exist today. 

“Sometimes people look at the STEM path as so cut and dry, that it’s all about getting behind a computer and landing a big job at Google or some other giant company,” Adenew says. He learned from his fraternity brother Ben Santiago ’22 that: “Computer science should also deal with social science. What good is all that math and science you learn going to do if you’re not using it to help people?”

Dave Martin, an economics and environmental studies professor who also chairs the college’s South Asian studies program, says his students would need far more time, data and controls to publish their research. But the projects sprang from curiosity and create the potential to learn more.

“These students took things that interested them, and asked questions,” he said. “Then they dove into the data to support or contradict what they thought they might find. In that respect, you can view the research as the start of a conversation.”

He said the execution and research will help them as they make their way into the world.

“When you’re on a job interview, and an employer asks you about work you’ve done that you’re proud of, this is something that distinguishes you from other candidates,” Martin said. “That’s a good outcome.”

Craig, who graduates next month, will begin his career as a global risk management analyst for Bank of America. He says the research he’s done taught him critical skills he’ll need for that role.

He came away from the economics project convinced that more emphasis needs to be placed on mental health issues worsened by the pandemic.

“We need to do more in the way of prevention,” he said, “so that we don’t continue to lose lives to drug overdoses.”

The well-tended С����Ƶ Presbyterian Church cemetery holds the remains of white residents—many who served as college leaders or professors. The more modest Christian Aid Society cemetery is the resting place for Black workers who also had ties to the college, first as enslaved people, and later as laborers.

Students saw the literary concepts they’d talked about in class come to life in the cemeteries. They talked about how college founders and professors once owned enslaved people. They discovered how many in the Black cemetery share the names of their enslavers in the white cemetery. And they made connections to racial disparities that still exist in education, housing, healthcare and income.

Students and Flanagan worked with Maurice J. Norman, the digital projects fellow leading the college’s Stories (Yet) to be Told: Race, Racism and Accountability on Campus initiative. They also met with former college archivist Jan Blodgett, and Chaplain Rob Spach.

And tied it all back into the literature.

“Toni Morrison is so intentional about death, and how the scars of slavery and grief can be physically manifested,” said Caroline Coffey ’22, who has a double major in English and psychology and plans to become a nurse practitioner. “The people in both cemeteries are heavily Christian, but how did we treat them differently in life, and in death?”