Academics

Fields: Environmental Studies and Biology
Faculty: Dr. Beth Forys

About the Project

Researchers put identifying bands on seabirds, shorebirds and wading birds to learn about their population sizes, movements, and habitat use. You will join a team of students who go to local beaches and wetlands to photograph banded birds including Black Skimmers, Red Knots, and Piping Plovers. You will help enter this important data and map these birds during the fall, winter and spring. You will share your results with the group at meetings every other week.

Dr. Forys is a professor in Eckerd’s Environmental Studies and Biology disciplines. She is a conservation biologist interested in spatial ecology and endangered species. She teaches Environmental Biology, Conservation Biology, GIS, Research Methods and Field Ornithology.

Field: French
Faculty: Dr. Kathryn Bastin

About the Project

In ancien régime France, women in salons were writing, collaborating, and storytelling fairy tales that markedly contrasted with our modern-day notion of the fairy tale. Today, many of the tales that inspired Disney were drawn from these seventeenth- and eighteenth-century predecessors. While Charles Perrault remains the most famous of fairy tale writers today with “Little Red Writing Hood,” “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty,” it was, in fact, a woman, Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, that coined the term “fairy tale” (conte de fées) in the late seventeenth century. These salonnières were writing tales by adults for adults, and many of the stories had deep sociopolitical resonances, advocating for women’s intellectual and reproductive freedom, among many other feminist agendas. This project will tap into either Plant Studies (an interdisciplinary field that examines connections between humans and the botanical world), Animal Studies, or Queer Studies, depending on discussions between Dr. Bastin and the ideal candidate and their mutual academic interests and goals. The research associate selected for this project must have intermediate high or advanced proficiency in French and should feel at ease researching, reading, and summarizing both primary and secondary sources in French.

Kate Bastin received her Ph.D. in French/Francophone Studies from Indiana University in 2016. At Indiana University, she was the Acting Director of French Language Instruction for the 2017-2018 academic year and taught and supervised elementary and intermediate French language and culture courses. She also has taught at two small liberal arts colleges, DePauw University and Marian University, leading all levels of French courses, from introductory to advanced literature and culture courses. Her teaching and research interests include French language and culture, early modern French literature, women’s writing, animal studies, fairy-tale studies, and birth and maternity in Old Regime France. Bastin has had the pleasure of living in Aix-en-Provence and Lille, first as a student and then as a teacher. She has published in Cahiers du dix-septième and has a forthcoming article in Early Modern French Studies. Her current book project is on the simian in Old Regime France.

Field: Creative Writing
Faculty: Dr. Jessica Rae Bergamino

About the Project

For more than fifty years, the award winning Eckerd Review has served as the creative heartbeat of Eckerd College by publishing literary and visual art by Eckerd students, alumni, and our extended community. In this project, research associates will step into on-campus leadership roles supporting the full production process of the literary magazine from solicitation through publication. Additionally, researchers will have the opportunity to organize on-going campus events such as open mics, community writing groups, and art salons. Research associates will also take leadership roles organizing the new Eckerd Review Visiting Writers Series. This will include learning about regional authors, inviting participation, organizing readings for the greater St. Petersburg community, and organizing Q&As with the authors. Throughout this program, students will gain valuable experience in publishing and literary community organizing.

Jessica Rae Bergamino is an award-winning poet and educator. Her most recent collection, Girlhood x a Haunting, received the Driftwood Press Editors’ Prize and was published in February, 2025. Her previous full length collection, UNMANNED, was the recipient of the Noemi Press Poetry Prize. She is also the author of multiple chapbooks from dancing girl press and Sundress Publications. Individual poems and essays have appeared in Poem-a-Day, Third Coast, The Rumpus, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere.

Field: Marine Science
Faculty: Dr. Amy Siuda

About the Project

The entire course will be an active learning opportunity where students will be working closely with a faculty member on research projects. Students will be engaged in research throughout the course of their freshman year collecting data, analyzing and interpreting their results and eventually presenting their findings. Thus, this course will focus primarily on students doing science compared to more traditional courses that teach about science. Once a week all students in the program will meet as a group with the faculty for discussions and updates on research projects. These meetings will give the entire research group a chance to exchange and develop ideas. Potential Marine Science projects include:

• Field studies and use of a catalog of dorsal fin markings to investigate social patterns in the bottlenose dolphin (field surveys and lab work with dolphin fin catalog)
• Trace metal concentrations in Gulf of Mexico sediments following the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill (lab work)
• Timing, frequency and environmental impacts of extreme events (e.g., hurricanes) or land use change on sensitive coastal environments, as recorded in sediments (field and lab work)
• Microplastics in Tampa Bay: spatial and temporal variability (field collecting and lab work)
• Assessing impacts from red tide on seafloor communities and geochemical processes (field collection and lab work)
• Establishing baseline seafloor community and geochemical processes characterization prior to Deep Sea Mining (lab work)
• Surveillance of Pollution from Emerging Chemical Threats in Tampa Bay (field collection and lab work)
• Climate change research on invertebrate fishery species physiology and reproduction (lab work)
• Monitoring juvenile recruitment and tagging of fishery species (stone crabs) in Tampa Bay (field work + lab work)
• Assess the influence of environmental factors on soil development as well as plant establishment, distribution, and productivity in natural and created mangrove forests
• Monitoring and assessment of resilience and population structure of local sea anemone populations (field collecting and lab work)
• Identifying ecological dynamics and drivers of marine invertebrate assemblages in estuarine to deep-sea environments over geological timescales and in response to anthropogenic impacts (field and/or lab work)
• Environmental DNA sampling in local waterways alongside visual surveys for invasive species and other invertebrate taxa of interest (field and lab work)

Field: Mathematics
Faculty: Dr. Erin Griesenauer

About the Project

Let’s say that you’re meeting with someone from another city. You’re both driving, and you want to meet in the middle. How do you find the best place to meet? What does “best” mean?  In this project, we’ll tackle that question, and think about how our answers will change if more people are joining our meeting. We’ll investigate if measuring time spent driving instead of distance changes our answers, and think about what is the best mathematical description of “fair” in this setting.  Working in the field of computational social choice, this project will involve some coding in Python and some mathematics. However, all you need is an open mind and willingness to learn, and all are welcome to apply for this project.

Dr. Erin Griesenauer completed her Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Iowa and joined the faculty at Eckerd College in 2016. Since then, she has overseen several student projects in abstract and applied mathematics, as well as math pedagogy. Her own research is in the area of operator theory, and combines perspectives and techniques from abstract algebra, complex function theory, linear algebra, and differential geometry. In particular, she is interested in studying algebras of cross sections of holomorphic matrix bundles.