For its 12th year, the Cross-Disciplinary Science Institute (X-SIG) at Gettysburg College sponsored a summer program designed for undergraduate students to gain invaluable, hands-on research skills.
In total, 64 students and 23 faculty members spent eight weeks working in various labs, attending career panels, and discussing their research with one another. It proved to be a unique opportunity for Gettysburg students to develop and deepen a set of enduring skills that will prepare them for future success, whether they decide to pursue a career in research or another field.
Participating in the X-SIG program this summer were a wide range of academic departments, including health sciences, psychology, physics, environmental studies, biology, mathematics, and chemistry. Leading the program was X-SIG Coordinator and Physics and Physics Prof. Kurt Andresen.
“Our students do wonderful research. They go off to get excellent jobs and they get into some of the top graduate programs in the world,” shared Andresen. “The whole idea behind the X-SIG program is to get our students Research Ready, Research Active, and Research Connected.”
Research Ready
Ensuring that Gettysburg College students feel prepared to engage in innovative research is a central objective of the X-SIG program. During the academic year, the program sponsors cross-disciplinary, research-based classes, which allow students to conduct research in a classroom environment.
This upcoming spring semester, there will be an X-Methods course titled “Drugs and Cells.” Andresen explained that in this lab, taught by Biology Prof. Jen Powell and Chemistry Prof. Tim Funk, “students will use chemistry to create a drug in Funk’s lab and then move to Powell’s lab to introduce the drug to C. Elegans (small worms) and see the effects.”
Another opportunity for students to become Research Ready is through the 290 classes, also known as mentored research internships, which were created as a part of the original X-SIG grant. “These ¼ credit courses are how many professors give students a chance to try out research during the semester without the full summer commitment,” said Andresen.
Research Active
“The Research Active part of X-SIG is the eight-week-long summer research program. This is actual research which, generally, is a part of the professor’s scholarship that they are actively publishing in and going to conferences for,” shared Andresen.
Andresen worked with four students this summer, one of whom was Macyn Rosay ’26, a physics major who has now completed two summers of work with X-SIG. Rosay and Andresen studied DNA condensation, aiming to understand DNA electrostatics.
“After the first few weeks, he gave us a lot of freedom with what we wanted to do with our project and independence to decide where we wanted to go with it,” shared Rosay. “I have fallen in love with my research—and even the parts that I don’t like as much, I still learned to do for the project.”
For Biology Prof. Ryan Kerney, it has been an easy decision to return to X-SIG every summer since he first joined the program in 2013. “I’ve worked with dozens of students at Gettysburg and in loads of different capacities. X-SIG is really my favorite in that it gives students a tremendous amount of insight as to what the research process is like—the frustrations, the successes, and the tinkering,” he shared.
Kerney focuses his research on embryo development, and he worked with two Gettysburg students over the summer on different projects. One student—Rachel Nguyen ’26, a chemistry major and international student from Vietnam—worked with RNA, DNA, and protein extraction of salamander oviducts.
“I worked with egg jellies from spotted salamanders,” Nguyen explained. “The salamanders have two different kinds of egg jellies—one is opaque, and one is clear—so I was really interested in seeing what makes them different, and how the differences can help to boost their immune systems.”
“Prof. Kerney is a very dedicated and knowledgeable professor,” she added. “I am from the Chemistry Department, so there is a lot of biology knowledge that I don’t know. I often would ask [him questions], and he would gently and calmly explain the situations to me. It was also very fun to get to know professors from other departments”
In the Health Sciences Department, Prof. Megan Benka-Coker also worked with two Gettysburg students over the summer. Most of her field work has been done out of the country, but she has been aiming to find ways to get students involved with her research more locally.
“In a lot of other countries, people don’t have access to electricity, and so they don’t have anything to cook on other than firewood or charcoal. I study the health effects of doing that,” shared Benka-Coker. “The project that we worked on this summer was a collaboration with Dickinson College, and we thought about alternative cooking fuels, particularly by testing bio-gas stoves.”
“My type of research is not in a lab, and every day is unique,” she added. “It’s a great way for students to get experience and think about field-based and community-based research which is very different from traditional lab experiences.”
Research Connected
The final objective of the X-SIG program is to get students Research Connected. “We don’t want students to only be doing research, we want them to be a part of a research community. This is something really special about Gettysburg College,” shared Andresen.
Along with working in their respective labs, all of the X-SIG students and faculty participated in weekly brown bag lunches, where they would discuss their work with researchers across different departments.
Psychology Prof. Sara Keefer began working with X-SIG this summer, and she collaborated with three students on neuroscience and behavioral projects. Through experiences like the brown bag lunches, Keefer gained a deeper understanding of the value practicing communication in the sciences, whether it’s with people from different projects or in different fields entirely.
“Communicating to all different levels of people is a really good skill,” she said. “Figuring out how to communicate your research to all levels is very important, especially when students go to grad school or into the job market.”
Kiley Flinn ’25, a psychology major who worked with Prof. Keefer over the summer, found these lunches to be highly interesting, given that she is “chronically curious.” She explained that “a lot of times, people in science can be very hyper focused on their specific niche, and it’s easy to get wrapped up in it. It’s great to be able to get a wider perspective and try to think outside of the box for ways to explain things to someone who has no background knowledge in your field.”
Another unique aspect of the summer program is the opportunity for students to attend graduate panels and gain valuable advice from Gettysburg alumni who either attended a graduate program after their time at Gettysburg or who went straight into the workforce.
“I had some inklings about wanting to go to graduate school before the panels, but I think going to them solidified it for me,” said Flinn. “It was great hearing from people who have the same background that I do, going to a small school. It also made me realize how great of an opportunity X-SIG is. At bigger schools, research positions are so much more competitive, but how you apply to X-SIG isn’t an interview or a test; you just have a conversation with a professor to show that you are passionate and can put in the work.”
To conclude the summer research program, students will partake in a poster session during Family Weekend in October to showcase their hard work and research findings.
By Brooke Askin ’25
Photos by Abbey Frisco, Prof. Kerny, Prof. Benka-Coker, and Kiley Flinn ’25
Posted: 08/19/24