See the World Beyond the Given

We hope you’ll participate in these sorts of worldview-expanding experiences – ones that transition into lifelong learning.

By Wake Forest University

May 21^st, 2024

Sarah Marmolejos conducts undergraduate research in Engineering professor Dr. Lauren Lowman’s Environmental Dynamics lab.

The project is focused on creating a high-resolution gridded product for vapor pressure deficit (VPD). VPD is a variable widely used for representing the atmospheric demand for water. Climate change has led to a greater need for understanding what causes drought and how it affects us and our environment. VPD can be useful in helping us to understand how plants respond to drought; however, there are currently no large-scale, high-resolution gridded datasets for VPD. Dr. Lowman and Sarah’s research aims to develop a product that spans the United States.

This project introduced Sarah to computational modeling and fostered her research interests in climate change, extreme weather events, aerosols and particle physics. Sarah has presented on this project twice during Undergraduate Research Day at Wake Forest and once during the 2022 American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference. Last December, Sarah returned to AGU in San Francisco to give a poster presentation on her and Dr. Lowman’s updated results.

Having grown up navigating the complexities of mixed-race identity, Emma Sullivan developed a passion for creating welcoming communities and a sense of belonging.

At Wake Forest University, we are dedicated to creating research opportunities that enrich the lives of students and their communities.

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, Charlie Huebner attended public schools with fellow students from widely different backgrounds, which instilled in him a passion for showing that diversity need not divide us but can instead unite us.

At Wake Forest, Emma and Charlie both found an avenue to pursue their passions in the Principled Pluralism Fellowship, which is sponsored by the Program for Leadership and Character and led by Dr. Bradley Burroughs, the Director of Leadership and Character in Academic, Civic, and Religious Life.

In a time marked by deepening social and political divisions, Dr. Burroughs and fellows like Emma and Charlie spend eight weeks each summer intensively researching the forces that divide us. But they seek not only to research principled pluralism but also to practice it by cultivating the skills and virtues – such as humility, empathy and courage – that can empower us to appreciate our differences while creating an inclusive community where everyone can feel like they belong.

Prompted by their First Year Seminar course, undergraduate students Logan Baitinger, Yeanaba Kamara and Lynn Yuan wondered about the role of emotions and sentiment in leadership.

That’s the focus of a course they are now developing with English professor Dr. Adrian Greene.

Dr. Greene, Logan, Yeanaba and Lynn plan for the new course to examine some of the most popular American literature of the last three centuries, literature often referred to as “sentimental.” They are considering those characteristics traditionally associated with the genre – inner strength, optimism and faith – to see why these attributes are stereotypically connected to women.

And they are approaching all of these texts with intellect and feeling!

As part of their scholarship, the group will interview women who serve in leadership roles. It will be part of a course that, coupled with the Program for Leadership and Character, focuses on engagement with virtuous exemplars to develop ideas about empathy and humility.

The pursuit of scientific discovery can be as much about uncovering new truths about yourself as about entering the unknown physical world – discovering the discoverer – learning how you respond to new challenges, dead ends or unexpected finds.

When embarking on this journey, it helps to have the best tools and contexts available.

And that is precisely what undergraduate student Anusha Vora has found at Wake Forest University.

As an undergraduate, she is a research assistant, working on diabetes research at the WFU School of Medicine.

She has even been published as an author of a scientific abstract. It is rare for undergraduate students to receive acknowledgment on a paper of this significance, but at Wake Forest, Anusha is also actively participating in this advanced medical research.

Spanish professor Dr. Sara Fernández Cuenca has influenced the undergraduate research of so many Wake Forest students. Anna Attal is one of them.

Anna conducts research through a Wake Forest URECA (Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities) grant with Dr. Fernández Cuenca. Their research centers on the WFU study abroad program in Salamanca, Spain.

Dr. Fernández Cuenca and Anna measure changes in students’ overall Spanish proficiency after one semester studying abroad. They conduct interviews with second-language learners of Spanish at the beginning and end of the semester – to measure changes in accuracy, fluency and complexity in students’ Spanish speech.

Anna is profoundly grateful for the research experience. She didn’t think it would be possible for her since she is in a non-STEM field. Attending an institution that encourages undergraduate research across disciplines has been ineffably enriching.

Professor Michael Rizzo has inspired undergraduate Emily Jones’ passion within the Department of Biology.

Emily was invited to Dr. Erik Johnson’s research lab with

Dr. Rizzo as her research mentor during her first year, spring semester. Under the guidance of Dr. Rizzo, she performs investigative procedures, using glyphosate and fruit flies.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in some herbicides. In recent findings, glyphosate is suggested to be toxic to eukaryotes – that is, animals, plants and fungi. Emily performs experiments that assess how the microbiome of the fruit fly might be affected by glyphosate.

The hope: that this research applies to humans to help understand how ingesting overly concentrated glyphosate in fruits and vegetables could possibly alter gene expression and the health of the gut microbiome.

During their weekly meetings, Dr. Rizzo checks in on Emily’s research. He asks her about her findings – but also about what is going on in her life and other courses. It is just one more example of how Wake Forest offers a superior academic experience – and one that is personalized, warm and welcoming.