By Deanna Howes Spiro, Vice President of Communications, AJCU
Our twenty-eight colleges and universities take pride in academic excellence and collaboration: In this issue of Connections, we are highlighting ways that our faculty are working with students to help advance research on their campuses.
Faculty research advisors serve as valued mentors to their students, in addition to providing them with opportunities to develop hands-on experience in a lab or in the field. At Georgetown University, the John and Pat Figge Woodstock Undergraduate Student Research Fellowship pairs Catholic Studies students with advisors who encourage them to apply a reflective lens to their research.
At Saint Joseph’s University, sociology students are learning entrepreneurial skills, thanks to Professor Keith Brown’s work developing the SJ Brew fair-trade coffee initiative. And at the University of Detroit Mercy, Associate Biology Professor Victor Carmona helped one student to see how her research on Chagas disease in El Salvador could lead to community empowerment.
We are also excited to feature Marquette University’s work on “re-imagining” the humanities through the Midwestern Humanities Without Walls Consortium; a Rockhurst University professor, whose research on computational chemistry and materials design has been conducted with her students; and new interdisciplinary research projects at Creighton University.
We hope that this month’s issue of Connections may inspire you to find new paths toward collaboration, all in the Jesuit spirit of forming people for and with others!