News and information about the Rhodes classroom experience.

Dr. Shana Stoddard, assistant professor of chemistry and director for student mentoring at Rhodes College, is featured in the April/May issue of ASBMB Today about inspiring students to engage in transformative research that extends beyond the classroom.

Students enrolled in Prof. Scott Newstok’s Special Topics seminar in the fall of 2021 became intimately acquainted with Michel de Montaigne, a revolutionary writer and thinker and one of Shakespeare’s major influences. In conceiving the course, Newstok approached Associate Director of Barret Library William Short to see whether they could create a curatorial experience for the students, focusing on themes in Montaigne's writing. The successful exhibition in Barret Library brought the writer to life for both the students and spectators.

A classroom discussion led by Dr. Charles McKinney, the Neville Frierson Bryan Chair of Africana Studies at Rhodes and associate professor of history, is airing during Black History Month on NBCLX, a digital news network owned by NBCUniversal. Taped during the 2021 fall semester, the broadcast focuses on how McKinney and his students are tackling uncomfortable conversations about America’s past and present.

Dr. Matt Lang, assistant professor of computer science at Rhodes College, has been awarded a one-year visiting research scientist position at Google in Sunnyvale, CA. Lang is working with the distributed data processing and analytics group, which builds large, Google-scale distributed data processing systems. “I came to Rhodes a few years ago because I loved the balance between research and teaching that Rhodes emphasizes,” says Lang. “I’m grateful to Rhodes for the ability to take this time away to do computer science research at industry scale and am excited for the opportunity to strengthen my—and Rhodes’ computer science department’s—connection to Google.”

Although robots have been designed to do simple repetitive tasks in the home and workplace, there is more research to be done before robots can perform more difficult autonomous tasks. Computer science majors Shane Elder ’21, Osman Celikok ’22, and Marisa Hudspeth ’22 have been working with Prof. Ross Sowell on human-robot interaction research. Also, the students have had their work supported by summer fellowships.

Rhodes College faculty have a strong investment in training future scientists, according to Dr. Larryn Peterson, associate professor of chemistry. With a National Science Foundation grant, she and her team of students have been conducting research that is yielding big benefits. Erykah Starr ’20, Alexa Alana ’20, Ryan Marasco ’21, and Skyler Cochrane ’18 share their experiences on the team.

Rhodes students are known for being intellectually curious and self-motivated, but it always helps to have the guidance of faculty mentors. Natalie Smith ’22, with the assistance of Dr. Ali Masood in political science, has been working on a project focusing on redistricting cases in the American federal judiciary. Masood calls Smith’s project “well thought out and well executed” that has the potential to be published in a peer-reviewed outlet.

Rhodes chemistry alumna Caroline Magee ’19 has had manuscripts based on her undergraduate research accepted for publication in two peer-reviewed scientific journals—Computational and Theoretical Chemistry and the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry.

The book provides a historical overview of Blacks’ socioeconomic position in American society and in the postindustrial class structure, as well as outlines a political agenda for change, according to the publisher.

Yavin Alwis ’20 joined Prof. Haberman’s lab his sophomore year and has been conducting experiments in human neuroscience and sophisticated computational modeling. Their article will be published in a forthcoming issue of Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications.