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A number of students are spending their winter break working closely with faculty on a wide-range of research projects through the College’s EXCEL Scholars Program.
A total of 39 students are taking part in research with 28 faculty members over the interim. Some are continuing projects while others are just getting underway. The research covers the full spectrum of academic disciplines – the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering.
Some of the topics are: contemporary women’s movements in Hungary, solutions to the ethnic conflict in Israel, measuring the effect of steroid hormones on female zebra finches, creating models to enhance environmental policy-making, and technology to remove the contaminate perchlorate from groundwater.
Typically, the interim and summer EXCEL experiences are more intense than the semester-long experiences as students are able to work with a professor essentially on a full-time basis.
The EXCEL program has helped make Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 160 students who participate in EXCEL each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.
Lafayette sends one of the largest contingents to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year. Twenty-one students presented their research at last year’s conference.