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If you want
Becoming
Colleagues Summer Sampler
REAL-WORLD CHALLENGES, PART 1
to try your hand
at research, you won’t have to wait long before getting
your feet wet at Pomona. A number of our students
are already immersed in projects in their first year,
tackling sophisticated research in nanotechnology,
DNA and aging, and dwarf planetary rotation. The
College offers extensive opportunities in all disciplines,
from creating digital biographies in media studies to
studying thermophilic organisms at Coso Hot Springs
in chemistry. Students work side-by-side with
professors in the classroom and the lab as part of the
regular curriculum and on year-round and summer
research projects. Seniors also work extensively with
faculty on their final research projects and theses.
Conducting research as an undergraduate not only
gives students an advantage when applying for
fellowships or graduate school; it also gives them a
chance to tackle real-world problems and to find out
what it’s like to be treated as colleagues by their
professors, many of whom are among the leading
experts in their fields.
The Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) enables students to
conduct extended, focused research in close cooperation with a Pomona
faculty member. Research projects, funded by Pomona and by public and
private foundations, take place both on campus and in the field. Although
the natural sciences account for the largest number of projects, the
humanities, social sciences and interdisciplinary disciplines are also well
represented. An average of 120 students work on research projects each
summer. Below is a sampling of some recent projects.
Art and Art History
Here, Now and Why: Place-Specific
Contemporary Southern California Art
in Context
Asian Studies
Asian Exceptionalism? Continuing the
Asian Values Debate
Astronomy
Berkeley 87: Stellar Variability of a
Young Star Cluster
Biology
Mutation-Selection Balance in Ciliates
Chemistry
Development of a Method for
Analyzing Biodiesel using High
Performance Liquid Chromatography
Computer Science
The Implementation of Object-
Oriented Languages in Pedagogical
Programming Environments
Economics
What Happens to Children When
Their Families Fail?
English
Alienation and Paranoia in Urban
Environments
Environmental Analysis
The Impacts of Fish Farming in the
Peruvian Amazon
Geology
The Influence of Normal Fault
Geometry on Porous Sandstone
Deformation: Insights from
Mechanical Models
History
The Japanese-American’s Struggle
with Identity in World War II
Linguistics and Cognitive Science
A Purloined Letter: Why Do We Miss
Things Right Before Our Eyes?
Mathematics
The Yang-Baxter Equation and
Integrable Systems
Media Studies
An Experiential Study In Live
Music Culture
Molecular Biology
Studies into the Origins of the
Adaptive Immune System
Neuroscience
Group Differences in Stress, EEG
Prefrontal Asymmetry and Health
Physics
Caging Atoms with Light: The
Magneto-Optical Trap
Politics
Human Trafficking in Argentina
Psychology
The Effect of Verbal and Nonverbal
Interventions on TOT Resolution
Religious Studies
Theology of Inculturation in
Northern Peru
Sociology
Who Gets Designated a Terrorist and
Why? A Comparative Cross-Sectional
Analysis of Government Terrorist Lists
www.pomona.edu/admissions
A Journey to the Arctic
Nina Karnovsky, an associate
professor of biology, has been traveling to the
Arctic since 1997 to study seabirds. For the past
two summers, she has taken a Pomona student
along on her summer research expeditions.
Background
Bailey: I grew up in Livermore, home to a nuclear lab, wine grapes and
cowboys. My dad, who is a high school biology teacher, got me interested in
the natural world by taking me hiking and on camping trips to Yosemite. I
also had an excellent AP bio teacher in high school.
Karnovsky: I was not at all interested in science and even petitioned out of
my science classes when I was at Wesleyan. My epiphany came after I
graduated, when I came to California and got at job at Point Reyes Bird
Observatory teaching kids about birds. I fell in love with research and started
taking seasonal jobs,
studying Goshawks in the
Grand Canyon, elephant
seals on the Farallon
Islands and sea turtles in
Hawaii. Ten years ago, I
started working in the
Arctic, which is where I did
the research for my Ph.D.
B: I grew up hearing
about the close
relationships that my
grandparents (professors
at Scripps and Pomona)
had with their students—
enjoying discussions,
having dinners for students
at their house, keeping in contact with their advisees after graduation. I
came here because I wanted to have that same kind of academic interaction.
After my sophomore year, I spent part of the summer studying birds in the
Eastern Sierras with Professor Levin [Rachel Levin, associate professor of
biology]. Then I took a vertebrate biology course from Professor Karnovsky
before heading to South Africa for my semester abroad. I was in South
Africa, sitting in this little Internet café in the heat of the summer, when I got
an email from her asking me to be her research assistant. I was ecstatic. I
didn’t have to think twice about accepting the job.
K: I could see Allison had the qualities I look for in a field assistant. She was
enthusiastic, easy to get along with, and good at designing projects—I have
students in all my classes design their own fieldwork and carry it out. I
thought she’d be a great candidate and I was right.
The Research Project: Currents of Change: How will the Feeding
Ecology of the Little Auk (Alle Alle) Change with Global Climate Change
The Location: The Polish Polar Station, Polar Bear Bay, Hornsund
Fjord, Spitsbergen Island, Norway
The Research
K: When I went to the Antarctic in 1992 I realized how any
change in the food web is quickly transmitted to birds. They’re
responsive to changes in ice conditions and warming, and that
changes their behavior, which is something we can measure.
B: Because little auks eat plankton, they’re good indicators of
what’s happening in the ocean. What’s cool about the place
where we were is that there are two currents. In addition to
being different temperatures, they have different types of
plankton. When there’s a lot of warm water and just a slice of
cold, the little auks mostly feed on the small plankton. When
the cold current dominates, you get a lot of energy-rich prey.
We have data for several years on where the currents are,
where the zooplankton are and what the currents are doing.
K: With such a short-term study we haven’t measured huge
declines in productivity, but one of the things we’re doing is
comparing our colony, which has a lot of warm water around
it, to another colony in Greenland—same species of bird—
surrounded by a lot of cold water.
Getting There
K: We flew from California to Newark to Oslo to the northern tip of Norway. Then it was on
to Longyearbyen and a two-day boat trip down to the Polish Polar Station.
B: There are about 25 people at the station in the summer, 10 in the winter. While we
were there, people were coming and going – scientists from Belgium and Norway, Spanish
glaciologists. Most of the researchers are from Poland.
K: One of the things I love about polar research is that it’s so international. That’s another
reason I chose Allison because I knew she would enjoy the social part of the experience
because she was making the most of her study abroad experience in South Africa.
B: Capturing the chicks and adult birds for measurements
doesn’t require any special techniques. The chicks nest in rock
crevices and you have to just reach in and grab them. The
adults, which look like small penguins but can fly, require
a net.
K: It’s daylight all the time when we’re there so we have to
keep working because the birds don’t stop. A lot of people
have a romanticized idea of what field research will be like. It
takes a lot of perseverance – conditions can be really
uncomfortable and animals don’t behave like you think they
might. Having this experience while you’re an undergraduate
helps when you need to make a decision about whether to go
to grad school in an area that involves field work.
B: We also spent three days on a large three-masted sailboat
that took us out to sea to collect samples in the currents of
cold and warm water where the auks find their food. You can
be sitting on the deck counting birds...nothing, one, nothing,
nothing…3,400!
Allison Bailey, a senior majoring in
biology, was the latest field assistant to spend four
weeks at the Polish Polar Station.
Back to Pomona
K: I’m happy I can give my students an opportunity to experience all levels
of a project. Allison was in the field for the data collection and has been
helping with the analyses and doing her own analysis for her senior thesis.
She wrote a poster and presented it at the Pacific Seabird Group meeting,
where she got an honorable mention. A few people asked when she was
going to get her Ph.D. I told them she was just graduating from college.
B: It’s been very cool. In addition to learning about biology, it’s been
interesting to make the connection between climate and predators. I’ve
also appreciated having a role model
like Professor Karnovsky. To have strong
women scientists in this department,
who can do so many different things,
is awesome.
The “Arctic Flu”
Allison was awarded a Fulbright to return
to the Arctic to study at the university in
Longyearbyen, where she’ll look at the
relationship between migrating geese and
plants of the tundra and how they are
affected by climate change. She’ll
probably cross paths with Laurel
McFadden ‘06, who also spent a summer
as a research assistant for Karnovsky and
was awarded a Watson Fellowship to
photograph people north of the Arctic
Circle. Karnovsky will also go back, this
time with three students from Pomona.
They will all be there for the International
Polar Year, a collaborative international
effort to study the polar regions that
takes place every 50 years.
K: Every student I bring to the Arctic gets
the “Arctic flu.” You catch the bug and
you have to go back. It becomes a part of
you. One of the things I love about it
that’s different from the Antarctic is that
there are all these wildflowers and land
mammals, in addition to the huge
number of seabirds. It’s extraordinarily
beautiful – harsh, stark, but full of color.
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