Author: Matthew

CLOSED: Deconstructing Free Cash Flow: How Varying Definitions Affect Financial Analysis and Decision Making (Aliaa Bassiouny)

Remote: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/8/2026 and run for 6 weeks, finishing on 7/17/2026.

Project Description

In this project, Lloyd Tanlu (Accounting and Finance) and I will work over Spring/Summer 2026 on our project which examines the impact of variations in the calculation of a company’s free cashflow (FCF). The use of discounted cash flow models to estimate the intrinsic value of a firm’s equity is the most widely accepted method of valuation in practice as well as in the academic literature. However, both practitioners and academics calculate FCF in notably different ways. These variations in FCF calculation methods can lead to materially different valuations and consequently investment decisions. Last summer, Professor Tanlu and I collaborated with SRS students on summarizing and discussing the major literature on free cashflow calculations and its implication on financial decision making. We also worked on data collection. Over spring and summer 2026, we plan to work with a summer research scholar to run preliminary empirical analysis to: (1) investigate the dispersions in FCF figures across financial data providers (FDPs) and to evaluate the magnitude of discrepancies across firms in various industries, and (2) investigate dispersion for firms that voluntary disclose FCF figures to compare their values to the FCF values from FDPs. We will also collect other firm data and data related to analyst dispersion estimates.

Apply now

Prerequisites

FIN221

Special Comments

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/8/2026

Estimated End Date: 7/17/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 6 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 1

Research Location: Remote

Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )

Contact Information: Aliaa Bassiouny (email: abassiouny@wlu.edu)

Domestic Violence, Policing, and Divorce Courts in China: A Socio-Legal Research Project (Wenqi Yang)

Remote: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/8/2026 and run for 6 weeks, finishing on 7/17/2026.

Project Description

This project examines how courts in China handle divorce cases involving domestic violence and how prior police involvement shapes judicial decision-making. Using a large collection of published court decisions, the project explores how judges evaluate evidence, describe domestic violence, and reference police actions in their rulings. Student researchers will work as manual coders on a selected subset of court decisions. Under close faculty supervision, students will read and code legal texts using a structured coding guide. The work involves identifying whether police were involved before the divorce case, categorizing the type of police action, and noting how judges reason about domestic violence claims. This project is well-suited for students interested in gender studies, law and society, social justice, East Asia, or qualitative research methods. Students will gain hands-on experience with real-world research data and learn how qualitative judgment contributes to empirical social science research.

Apply now

Prerequisites

Students should have reading proficiency in Chinese sufficient to understand formal written texts. Prior coursework or research experience in Sociology, Anthropology, Politics, Gender Studies, or related fields are preferred but not required. No prior experience with legal research or coding is required. Training will be provided.

Special Comments

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/8/2026

Estimated End Date: 7/17/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 6 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 2

Research Location: Remote

Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )

Contact Information: Wenqi Yang (email: wyang@wlu.edu)

Developing The Ancient Graffiti Project (Sara Sprenkle)

Hybrid: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/8/2026 and run for 10 weeks, finishing on 8/14/2026.

Project Description

The Ancient Graffiti Project (AGP) is a major scholarly resource for studying inscriptions written by ancient Romans that has been in development for over a decade. We (Professors Sprenkle and Benefiel) are looking for students to develop new tools and features to continue improving AGP. These new features include being able to search for poetic and religious graffiti, adding an index to link terms to the inscriptions that contain those terms, improving the Pompeii map, offering the site in Spanish and other languages, and an improved pipeline for filtering and searching results.

Apply now

Prerequisites

Students should have completed CSCI 209: Software Development.

Special Comments

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/8/2026

Estimated End Date: 8/14/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 10 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 2

Research Location: Hybrid

Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )

Contact Information: Sara Sprenkle (email: sprenkles@wlu.edu)

Business Case Writing/Open Educational Resource Development (Charlotte Hoopes)

Hybrid: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/15/2026 and run for 7 weeks, finishing on 7/31/2026.

Project Description

For this SRS project, students will work with me on two applied research projects in management and organizational behavior. The first project focuses on developing original business case studies based on real organizations. Students will assist with background research, outreach to organizations, interview preparation and participation, and drafting portions of the cases. The second project involves the final stages of an open educational resource (OER) eTextbook in management and organizational behavior. Students will help identify and evaluate credible sources, revise content for clarity and accuracy, incorporate short case studies and applied examples, and ensure materials meet accessibility requirements. Depending on student skills and interest, there may also be opportunities to contribute to graphic design work. I am looking for students who write well, pay close attention to detail, are reliable in completing assigned work, and want to deepen their understanding of organizational behavior topics.

Apply now

Prerequisites

Management and Organizational Behavior (BUS 217)

Special Comments

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/15/2026

Estimated End Date: 7/31/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 7 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 2

Research Location: Hybrid

Travel Required? Yes (If “yes”: There is the possibility of travel to locations within 1-2 hours of Lexington to conduct interviews, but this travel is limited and flexible.)

Contact Information: Charlotte Hoopes (email: choopes@wlu.edu)

Mission Drift and the Profitability Paradox as Double-Deviation (Gavin Fox)

Remote: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/8/2026 and run for 6 weeks, finishing on 7/17/2026.

Project Description

Prior research has largely examined mission drift in hybrid social enterprises through governance and institutional lenses. However, its breadth of application to services from the standpoint of customer perceptions, attributions, and recovery efforts remains understudied. In this study, mission drift is conceptualized as a form of moral value proposition failure rather than governance failure. Researchers will identify consumers of three types of firms (traditional CSR, legal Benefit Corporations, and BCorp certified) through brand followership on social media. Once identified, researchers will guide prospective respondents to an online scenario-driven research instrument. This is an opportunity for students to train on sales and marketing tactics and leverage these to skills to affect real-world outcomes.

Apply now

Prerequisites

No. We will teach them what they need to know in order to succeed.

Special Comments

Faculty will need to spend at least a few hours educating students on sales and marketing techniques to help them drive respondents to the instrument. We will also need to develop a strategy with workers to ensure effective remote work.

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/8/2026

Estimated End Date: 7/17/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 6 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 2

Research Location: Remote

Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )

Contact Information: Gavin Fox (email: foxg@wlu.edu)

CLOSED: Using GIS to identify wildland firefighting tactics (Calvin Bryan)

Remote: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/8/2026 and run for 6 weeks, finishing on 7/17/2026.

Project Description

In this project, students will use GIS programs to investigate how aircraft have been employed in combating active wildfires. Data has been collected on the exact times and locations of aerial drops of fire retardant from firefighting aircraft over about five years. Students will use this data, along with spatial data on wildfire burn boundaries over the same time period, to help identify the objective of each retardant drop. This data will ultimately be used as a part of a project to estimate the effectiveness of aerial firefighting at actually altering wildfire outcomes.

Apply now

Prerequisites

At a minimum, students should be familiar with ArcGIS. It will also be useful if students have experience working in R, Python, and/or have an interest in AI and machine learning.

Special Comments

Students will need to have access to ArcGIS. They will be able to do some of this work from home if they can use it on their personal computer, but may have to work from a campus computer if not.

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/8/2026

Estimated End Date: 7/17/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 6 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 1

Research Location: Remote

Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )

Contact Information: Calvin Bryan (email: cbryan@wlu.edu)

College Orchestra Directors Association Digital Archive Creation (Christopher Dobbins)

On campus: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/1/2026 and run for 10 weeks, finishing on 8/7/2026.

Project Description

This is a project to digitize the collected archives of the College Orchestra Directors Association. W&L was chosen from a pool of applicants to oversee the organization, archive, and digitization of these materials. This will be a special project that I hope to share with students to provide students valuable experience in archival processes and organization as well as provide insight into professional organizations.

Apply now

Prerequisites

Students should have experience in academic music courses such as music history, music theory, and/or music education courses.

Special Comments

No

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/1/2026

Estimated End Date: 8/7/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 10 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 1

Research Location: On campus

Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )

Contact Information: Christopher Dobbins (email: dobbinsc@wlu.edu)

Research on the U.S. Electoral College (Sheahan Virgin)

Remote: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/8/2026 and run for 6 weeks, finishing on 7/17/2026.

Project Description

Student will assist the professor with his book project, primarily by collecting and coding data, reading and annotating academic and journalistic resources, etc.

Apply now

Prerequisites

CLOSED FOR RECRUITMENT: The student must have taken my seminar, “Electoral College Politics” (POL-397.D.01, Fall 2025). The student who has agreed to work with me (NASSE, Ava) has indeed done so.

Special Comments

No

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/8/2026

Estimated End Date: 7/17/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 6 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 1

Research Location: Remote

Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )

Contact Information: Sheahan Virgin (email: svirgin@wlu.edu)

Unraveling the Spider’s Internal Clock (Natalia Toporikova)

On campus: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/8/2026 and run for 8 weeks, finishing on 7/31/2026.

Project Description

Are you curious about how biological timekeeping systems develop? Join our research team investigating circadian rhythms in spiders across their development. You’ll maintain our spider colony, collect behavioral data using advanced locomotor monitoring systems, analyze patterns using Python,R and statistical methods, and conduct histological analysis to link molecular changes with behavior. This is a rare opportunity to work across the full research pipeline—from hands-on animal care to computational analysis—and contribute to fundamental questions about how nervous systems develop. No prior experience in all areas is needed; we’re looking for curious minds with genuine interest in biology, data science and willingness to think creatively.

Apply now

Prerequisites

Interest in spiders

Special Comments

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/8/2026

Estimated End Date: 7/31/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 8 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 2

Research Location: On campus

Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )

Contact Information: Natalia Toporikova (email: Toporikovan@wlu.edu)

Few-Body Quantum Systems in Harmonic Traps (Son Nguyen)

Hybrid: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/8/2026 and run for 8 weeks, finishing on 7/31/2026.

Project Description

The problem of few-body interactions in the presence of external confining potentials is motivated by recent advances in both experimental atomic physics and theory. Many realistic confining potentials, such as optical traps, are well approximated by a harmonic form (elastic potential). Increasing the number of interacting particles from two to three or more involves a tremendous leap in the complexity of the theoretical description. In this project, students will work on extending the Gaussian Expansion Method (GEM) to study strongly interacting three-body systems in a harmonic trap. The GEM is a variational technique that approximates the wave function using a superposition of Gaussian basis functions. Building on established two-body results, where universal behavior emerges near the unitary limit, this project will investigate how three-body correlations arise and how Coulomb interactions lead to a breakdown of universality. Students will gain hands-on experience solving the few-body Schrödinger equation numerically, analyzing the energy spectrum, and interpreting results in a broader physics context.

Apply now

Prerequisites

PHYS 210 – Modern Physics

Special Comments

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/8/2026

Estimated End Date: 7/31/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 8 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 2

Research Location: Hybrid

Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )

Contact Information: Son Nguyen (email: snguyen@wlu.edu)