Five Lee University students, Nicole Tripp, Ana Villa, Ashley Walker, Kyra Williams, and Kelly Wnuk, were selected by the Appalachian College Association as Colonel B. Ledford Scholars.
The Colonel B. Ledford Scholarship offers financial assistance to eligible students who are conducting summer research at ACA member institutions.
Ms. Tripp and Ms. Walker will write an English translation of Philastrius of Brescia’s “Liber Diversarum Hereseon” or “Book of Various Heresies.” This book is a Latin work from the later Roman Empire and it has not yet been translated into English.
Ms. Tripp and Ms. Walker will translate the Latin text, aiming to provide an English translation that is not only accurate, but also well-written. Ms. Tripp is a senior classics major and Ms. Walker is a sophomore English literature and classics major. Dr. Aaron Johnson, associate professor of humanities and classics, will serve as their faculty sponsor.
Ms. Villa, a senior psychology major, will study the relationship between people’s socio-cultural ideals and to what degree they display colorblind racist attitudes. She will specifically be looking at how socio-cultural ideals and colorblind racist attitudes affect in-group/out-group bias, which is the tendency to favor those in your own racial group.
Her project, “The New Way to Discriminate: Colorblind Racism and Socio-Political Ideologies,” will be supervised by Dr. Bryan Poole, assistant professor of psychology.
Ms. Williams will work to develop ways to incorporate freely accessible technology into blood spatter analysis. Her goal is to use these methods of incorporating technology in order to develop activities for high school science and math classes in the Appalachian region.
Ms. Williams is a junior biological science major. The title of her project is “Integrating technology into blood spatter analysis” and Dr. Lori West, associate professor of biology, will be her faculty sponsor.
Ms. Wnuk, an anthropology major, will study historical societies and other groups who wish to preserve confederate monuments for their historical value. She will examine how historical societies will have to reorganize in response to people who are calling to remove all confederate monuments.
Ms. Wnuk’s project is titled “Leave history alone: Negotiating collective memory of confederate relics and historical preservationist groups in East Tennessee.” Dr. Arlie Tagayuna, associate professor of sociology, will be her faculty sponsor.
The students will present their research at ACA’s Annual Summit in September. Students who were awarded a Ledford Scholarship attend the Summit with their mentors, where they gain valuable experience and are given an opportunity to learn more about professional development in their chosen fields of study.
For more information about the ACA, the Annual Summit, or the Ledford Scholarship, visit https://acaweb.org/.