Thanks to URSI, Scientific Research is Going Strong at Vassar

“Vassar serves as a great training ground for our STEM and bio-med students, and despite all of the funding cuts elsewhere, we were able to run a full URSI program this summer,” said Associate Professor of Psychological Science Hadley Bergstrom, director of this year’s URSI program.

The URSI program was able to dodge the effects of the cuts in government funding because it is supported by a host of private foundations, endowments from alums, faculty grants, and other independent donations, Bergstrom explained.

The students will showcase their work at the College’s annual URSI Symposium, to be held this year on September 17 in the Villard Room. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Sheena Josselyn, a Canadian neuroscientist and a full professor of psychology and physiology at the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto.

Following is a look at three URSI projects conducted this summer:

Assessing Moose Presence and Status in a New Hampshire Forest

Moose are large, iconic animals of the northern woods, often sought out by photographers and tourists. As such, they play an important role in local tourism, but more importantly, they play a unique ecological role in these forests. As temperatures increase and less snow and cold weather dominate the regions they call home, moose in northeastern United States and Canada are facing many challenges. Their food supplies are becoming patchier, parasites are more prevalent, and a rising abundance of predators such as coyotes and black bears pose a threat to newborn calves.

URSI student Otis Wildman ’26, a biology major from Tampa, FL, and Associate Professor of Biology Lynn Christenson spent the summer analyzing such challenges for moose at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, a 7,800-acre northern hardwood forest located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Significant delays in funding by the National Science Foundation forced Wildman and Christenson to spend less time in the forest than originally planned. But Christensen allocated her URSI stipend to cover some of the expenses for the trip to New Hampshire to meet with other scientists in the field who were conducting similar research.

On the trip they monitored cameras that captured the movements of moose and other wildlife. When he returned to Vassar, Wildman used specially designed software to map and analyze the data. He is preparing a poster on the increased presence of coyotes in the Hubbard Brook forest and its effect on other wildlife there. “My experience was really useful and let me gain some insight from professionals in the field,” he said.

Christenson explained that the growing number of predators means that moose are experiencing more stress, and due to the added stress of living in a warmer, climate, they don’t eat enough in the summer months to bulk up for the winter”

Christensen said she was pleased that sufficient funding had been secured to run her URSI project. “A lot of programs are shutting down around the country, but Vassar science is going strong,” she said. “At the Annual Hubbard Brook Cooperators meeting that was held in July, more than 75 of us delivered talks and swapped stories about our research. The current times can be depressing, but it’s good to know we are still tracking what’s going on in our environment and talk about why we should care about this research.”

Wildman said he was certain his URSI project would help him explore some post-Vassar career paths. “It’s really been useful in defining the next steps in my career,” he said, “I’m grateful for the URSI program, not just for what I studied but for the meals and workshops I took part in with other URSI students.”

Video by Deborah Swartz

Monitoring Water Quality in the Hudson River and Its Tributaries

The Hudson River serves as a source for drinking water for some Hudson Valley residents and a haven for fishing and other activities for residents and visitors from New York City to Troy. This summer, two URSI students, Paloma Oteiza ’26 and Jordan Alch ’26, spent a day cruising up the Hudson from Ossining to Poughkeepsie on a boat operated by Riverkeeper, an environmental organization that monitors water quality and habitat in and along the river and its tributaries and assesses the impact of climate change on the river’s ecology.

Oteiza, a chemistry and education double major from Denver, CO, analyzed water samples she had collected in the river back in a lab in the Bridge for Laboratory Sciences, looking primarily for the presence of phosphates in the water.

Levels of phosphates can serve as key indicators of the health of the river, Oteiza said. Her research showed that they have not changed significantly since a previous study was conducted about 30 years ago. “Phosphates are present in rocks and plants in the water,” she explained. Too much phosphate can indicate the presence of sewage and other pollutants in the river, while too little can also signal other threats to the river’s ecology.

Oteiza said she applied some of the research she did in the lab resembled her work in her chemistry classes, “but I really enjoyed getting out in the community and meeting people who live along the river who are affected by its ecology. This summer’s experience was a combination of scientific research and community interaction.”

“As a chemistry major I was looking for a way to apply my chem background with community and environmental issues,” she continued, “so this (URSI project) seemed like a good fit.”

Alch’s research involved cataloguing the kinds of fish and other aquatic life she found in the Hudson and its tributaries, monitoring the presence or scarcity of species she found above and below dams in the Hudson’s tributaries. Alch, an earth science and anthropology major from Orlando, FL used a procedure called “electro-fishing” to temporarily shock the fish so she could hold them and enable Riverkeeper ecologist Matthew Best to identify them before returning them, unharmed, back into the water.

Alch, an earth science and anthropology major from Orlando, FL, said she had never held a fish before she conducted the study this summer. She found 34 species of aquatic life during her study. “It was definitely a fun project,” she said. “We looked at the effect of man-made dams on the fish populations above and below the dams. As an earth science major, I’ve been on my fair share of field trips at Vassar, and this was an extension of that kind of experience. It’s a different way to learn from being in a classroom, and I even talked about what the future of the environmental research field looks like with some of the people from Riverkeeper and the DEC (state Department of Environmental Conservation).”

Faculty mentors for the project were Assistant Professor of Earth Science and Environmental Studies Deon Knights and Associate Professor of Biology Justin Touchon. Both said they had been impressed with their students’ independence in completing the project. “I’ve been involved with Riverkeeper on other projects, and they approached us to do this study,” Knights said. “The students were pretty autonomous, and we gathered a lot of good data.”

Touchon agreed. “I played a very small part in this study,” he said, “but it was a pleasure watching the students do so much independent thinking, figuring out things on their own,” he said. “And the study will be useful to people living along the river.”

Re-Imagining the Introductory Physics Lab

David R. Rishell, senior lecturer and lab coordinator in physics, designed the URSI project for Neil Grant ’27, a physics major from New Hartford, NY. Together, they crafted ways of demonstrating basic physics experiments—such as crashing carts on a track to test Newton’s laws of motion or testing the tension of springs, or measuring the width of a human hair—and using software that allows students to see the data from these experiments on an iPad.

Rishell said looking at new ways to teach physics in the lab is an ongoing process in most colleges and universities. “We are always looking for ways to improve the laboratory process so the students can have more agency in the choices they make in designing experiments and analyzing data,” he said.

Grant said he hoped that making lab work more intuitive and fun might induce some students who do not intend to take more physics courses to do so. “This work took me way beyond introductory physics,” he said. “As part of the URSI project, I read a lot of studies on how teaching in the physics lab works and how to impart that knowledge to students.”

Grant said he applied the information he gained by reading the studies to decide how to apply the information to designing lab work for Vassar students. “It was a chance to do something this summer in a fun and free environment,” he said.

Rishell said the work he and Grant had done this summer would enable his students to understand how the experiments they would be performing had real-world applications in work they may be doing in their post-Vassar lives. One of the experiments Rishell pointed to was measuring the tension of springs, which is important in the design of shock absorbers for cars. Another experiment, using lasers to measure the width of a human hair, is important in the study of forensics. “Through this process of modeling they are developing many technical and practical skills,” he said.

Video by Deborah Swartz