Category: SRS Round 3 (March 2026)

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.

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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)

Maury River Atlas StoryMaps Project (Mackenzie Brooks)

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

Project Description

This is a collaborative project with Rockbridge Outdoors and the Virginia Canals and Navigations Society to produce a digital story map based on the contents of The Maury River Atlas, a print river guide that provides historical information to paddlers and visitors to the river. This project will involve creating data and digital maps using the ArcGIS platform. There will be some research in Special Collections and Archives to supplement the atlas. There is also interest in interviewing the community collaborators to record their voices and encyclopedic knowledge of the river, with potential to create an audio tour. The ultimate goal is to create a resource for visitors and locals of Rockbridge County to enhance their appreciation of the river’s history.

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Prerequisites

Experience with ArcGIS or other mapping software is preferred. Students will be expected to work with GIS data, audio production, archival material, community partners, and spend time on the river.

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: 1

Research Location: On campus

Travel Required? Yes (If “yes”: Travel in Rockbridge County to verify locations on maps. Trip to Lynchburg to interview Canal Society members. )

Contact Information: Mackenzie Brooks (email: brooksm@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.

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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)

Neuroendocrine predictors of dispersal behavior (Nikki Lee)

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

Project Description

For solitary rodents, dispersal marks a major geographic and social transition away from the close social environment of the family unit. This transition from social to solitary may be promoted by reduced social tolerance for family members, and/or by unrelated factors such as increased exploration and activity. Dispersal has impacts across multiple levels of biological organization, from population genetic diversity to individual fitness. Despite the prevalence and importance of dispersal in many species, the neural mechanisms underlying the timing and initiation of this process remain poorly understood. My lab aims to investigate what changes in the behavior of Belding’s ground squirrels, colonial tuco-tucos, Eastern gray squirrels, and fox squirrels during this transition—and what neuroendocrine mechanisms underlie this transition. Broadly, this research elucidates the neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying an important but understudied facet of mammalian biology by integrating laboratory neuroscience with study of behavior in naturalistic settings. Assessment of behavior in a laboratory setting allows for fine-grained analysis of the mechanisms underlying that behavior, while assessment of behavior in an animal’s complex natural environment allows a complete picture of the context in which that animal’s brain and behavior have evolved. However, few studies bridge the gap between lab-based studies of mechanism and field-based analyses of behavior. Students will be involved in tissue processing (e.g., slicing brains), literature searches, data analysis, behavioral scoring, and behavioral assays in the field.

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Prerequisites

Students need to have already worked in my lab for one semester, or have already spoken to me about working in my lab in the future.

Special Comments

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/1/2026

Estimated End Date: 7/10/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 6 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 3

Research Location: Hybrid

Travel Required? Yes (If “yes”: A subset of students will go to the field with me in July (our field site is outside of Yosemite National Park). )

Contact Information: Nikki Lee (email: nlee@wlu.edu)

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.

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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)

Entrepreneurship, Ethics, and Behavior: A Multi-Project Research Practicum (Joel Adams)

On campus: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/29/2026 and run for 6 weeks, finishing on 8/7/2026.

Project Description

This project offers 2–3 students the opportunity to work as junior research collaborators across one or more of my active research programs in entrepreneurship and business ethics. Students will engage directly with a range of research activities, from design and IRB processes to data collection and analysis. I will allocate students across projects based on fit, interest, and where each project stands at the start of the SRS term. Work may involve contribution to one project or across several. The three active research streams are: 1) Entrepreneurial Visionaries, Scientists, and Opportunists. My prior qualitative research has produced a typology of approaches to entrepreneurship. This project extends that work into a quantitative phase. Depending on progress and student aptitude, tasks may include instrument design, participant recruitment and outreach, IRB documentation, survey administration, and statistical analysis. 2) Edgework in the Digital Age. This project applies the sociological concept of edgework—voluntary risk-taking at the boundaries of acceptable behavior—to stand-up comedy in the digital media environment. Tasks may include systematic literature review spanning sociology, entrepreneurship, media studies, and organizational behavior; theory development; and qualitative coding of stand-up comedy sets. 3) Perceived Moral Violation and Mission Drift. Building on my prior experimental work examining audience responses when mission-oriented ventures are perceived to have violated core values, this project develops further experimental work around the conditions under which such perceptions form and spread. Depending on direction, tasks may include experiment design around moral violation and mission drift, exploration of debiasing interventions, or investigation of social contagion dynamics in audience response. Tasks may also include materials development, IRB documentation, participant recruitment, data collection, and analysis. All students will be expected to participate in regular meetings with the team. I expect students to engage seriously with primary literature and to use AI-assisted tools thoughtfully as part of the research workflow.

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Prerequisites

None required. Interest in entrepreneurship, business ethics, psychology, and sociology is helpful and welcome. Comfort working independently and with nascent, ambiguous research questions is essential.

Special Comments

The project runs on-campus for six weeks, from June 29 through August 7, 2026. Students should anticipate several remote working days. Students considering graduate study in business, psychology, or related social sciences are particularly encouraged to apply.

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/29/2026

Estimated End Date: 8/7/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 6 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 3

Research Location: On campus

Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )

Contact Information: Joel Adams (email: jadams2@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.

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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)

Variety of Deviance and Social Control (Ivan Shmatko)

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

Project Description

This project aims to document diversity in how people approached human relations. To be more precise, it seeks to document diversity in terms of control over human behavior. We will dig deeper into how different people, groups, and societies think about what constitutes wrong and right, what they define as crime, and what they see as inappropriate, shameful, desired, and required. No less importantly, we will try to figure out what they do when those norms are breached. We will primarily work with secondary sources. However, it is possible, under certain circumstances, that we might engage in some empirical work as well.

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Prerequisites

No

Special Comments

No

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: Ivan Shmatko (email: ishmatko@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.

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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)

Seasonal shifts in small mammal abundance and species richness at W&L (Jacob Kraus)

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

Project Description

This summer research opportunity invites one student to investigate how small mammal communities change across seasons in Washington and Lee University’s back campus. Small mammals play critical ecological roles, including as seed dispersers, prey species, ecosystem engineers, and reliable indicators of habitat quality. However, their behavior, detectability, and distribution shift markedly throughout the year. Understanding these seasonal dynamics is essential for interpreting community structure, assessing environmental change, and informing long-term conservation or management decisions on campus lands. The selected student will deploy motion-activated camera traps across a variety of microhabitats to document species presence, relative abundance, and habitat use during the summer months. This work will provide a warm-season dataset that complements existing fall and winter camera-trap surveys on campus. While collecting and organizing the summer dataset is a priority, the student will have the freedom to design an independent project tailored to their own interests. Potential avenues include comparing summer observations to patterns from other seasons on campus, examining how weather or vegetation structure influences detection rates, evaluating spatial differences across back-campus habitats, or exploring behavioral activity patterns captured on camera. This project is ideal for students interested in ecology, conservation biology, or field-based research and offers the chance to generate original insights into the seasonal rhythms of a local small-mammal community.

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Prerequisites

The student should have completed BIOL 245 or have experience using camera traps. The student should also either have their own vehicle or be willing to get certified to use the campus vehicles.

Special Comments

The student should be available during the last week of the spring term for the first round of camera deployments.

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: 1

Research Location: On campus

Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )

Contact Information: Jacob Kraus (email: jkraus@wlu.edu)