Category: SRS Round 3 (March 2026)

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.

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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)

Fear, Conformism, and State Power in the USSR and Russia: A Literary Perspective (Anna Brodsky)

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

Project Description

Students will read a variety of texts involving the discussion of conformity, beginning with Vladimir Sorokin and Friedrich Gorenshtein. Most importantly, students will read contemporary newspapers addressing the events described or alluded to in the literary texts.

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Prerequisites

Students must be fluent in Russian.

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: Remote

Travel Required? No (If “yes”: )

Contact Information: Anna Brodsky (email: brodskya@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.

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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)

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.

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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)

Reconstructing the thermal history of rocks using Raman spectroscopy (Jeffrey Rahl)

On campus: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/08/2026 and run for 8 weeks, finishing on 7/31/2026.

Project Description

The temperature history of rocks can be used to inform and test models of tectonic processes and the development of mountain belts. Our research will focus on creating protocols to reconstruct peak metamorphic temperatures using Raman Spectroscopy of carbonaceous material. We will apply this technique to provide new insights into the development of the Appalachians. The research will involve literature research, field work, laboratory work, and data analysis.

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Prerequisites

EEG 100 or equivalent preferred

Special Comments

No

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/08/2026

Estimated End Date: 7/31/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 8 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 2

Research Location: On campus

Travel Required? Yes (If “yes”: The time of field work is flexible and to be determined, and will (likely) focus on the central Appalachians.)

Contact Information: Jeffrey Rahl (email: rahlj@wlu.edu)

Enslavement at Liberty Hall: Uncovering the Archaeology and Forgotten History of Washington and Lee’s Iconic Back Campus (Donald Gaylord)

On campus: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/08/2026 and run for 8 weeks, finishing on 7/31/2026.

Project Description

During the summer of 2026 Professor Gaylord will continue his research at Liberty Hall, the location of the iconic 18th-century campus of our predecessor institution, Liberty Hall Academy. In the 1970s, Professor John McDaniel and roughly a decade of W&L students excavated here, focusing largely on the academic period of the site’s occupation (1782-1803). Professor Gaylord’s research has shown that after the Liberty Hall Academy House burned down in January 1803, the two subsequent land owners held roughly one hundred African Americans in bondage at Liberty Hall as the labor force for agriculture and light industry over the years between 1803 and the American Civil War. Our work this summer will focus on excavation in the yard spaces around the Foundation at Liberty Hall—Liberty Hall Structure 9—the academy’s Steward’s House/Dining Hall, which later served as the center of enslaved life at Liberty Hall Plantation. Enslaved people lived here, but they also likely operated a forge, cooked and ate, performed washerwoman and seamstress work, and operated one of the earliest African American schoolhouses in the Valley of Virginia. Additionally, we will concentrate on artifact processing and analysis in trying to understand what life was like for the people held in bondage at Liberty Hall. We will excavate while the weather allows, we will process and analyze the sediments and artifacts when the weather keeps us indoors, and we will visit archives in Rockbridge and Augusta County that hold many of the documents related to Liberty Hall.

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Prerequisites

Prior coursework in Archaeology, preferably SOAN 210 or 211 (Field or Laboratory Methods in Archaeology), but other skills or experience may be accommodated.

Special Comments

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/08/2026

Estimated End Date: 7/31/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 8 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 2

Research Location: On campus

Travel Required? Yes (If “yes”: Mostly local travel covered by the Archaeology Lab.)

Contact Information: Donald Gaylord (email: gaylordd@wlu.edu)

Critical mineral extraction paired with acid mine drainage bioremediation (Margaret Anne Hinkle)

Hybrid: this project is scheduled to begin on 6/22/2026 and run for 8 weeks, finishing on 8/14/2026.

Project Description

The research for 2026 will be focused on our collaborative NSF grant with University of Pittsburgh and Hedin Environmental. Rare earth elements, also known as “critical minerals” are those we need for the upcoming energy transition as we move away from carbon-based energy to renewables. You may have heard of a lot of interest in deep sea ocean nodule mining for these REEs – and of the unknown impact that may have on that important ecosystem. These deep sea ocean nodules bind REEs because they are comprised of Mn oxides, known as “the scavengers of the sea.” As it turns out, acid mine drainage contains a lot of rare earth elements, and a by product of acid mine drainage remediation is the precipitation of manganese oxides thanks to the help of manganese oxidizing fungi. We are investigating whether we can take these Mn oxide mineral byproducts of AMD remediation and put them upstream where the water has high concentrations of REEs and extract these REEs in economically viable amounts. We are pairing these field experiments with lab-based experiments, growing the same fungi in our lab that are responsible for manganese oxide biomineralization, and reacting them with REEs to see a) how much of the REEs are removed from solution and b) how? Are they binding to the Mn oxides or to the fungal biomass? The work this summer will better our understanding of whether remediating REEs and Mn from AMD in this way can address the need for domestic sources of critical minerals by enhancing reclamation from AMD discharges rather than creating additional environmental degradation by mining REE ores or seafloor dredging of deep-sea nodules, ideally providing economic incentive for the treatment of AMD-impacted waters, resulting in cleaner, more ecologically diverse streams and rivers.

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Prerequisites

None

Special Comments

Project Information (subject to change)

Estimated Start Date: 6/22/2026

Estimated End Date: 8/14/2026

Estimated Project Duration: 8 weeks

Maximum Number of Students Sought: 5

Research Location: Hybrid

Travel Required? Yes (If “yes”: Pittsburgh, PA to acid mine drainage field sites, toward the end of the summer. )

Contact Information: Margaret Anne Hinkle (email: hinklem@wlu.edu)