桃瘾社区

Spring 2021 Research

One distinguishing feature of a 桃瘾社区 education is that research isn鈥檛 just for faculty and advanced graduate students鈥攊t鈥檚 also for undergraduates. In fact, 桃瘾社区 has spent the past several years taking undergraduate research to the next level.

Isabelle Labianco '22 was able to rebound quickly when her summer internship plans fell through. Instead of a summer in an office cubicle, Isabelle was accepted to the Provost鈥檚 Student-Faculty Undergraduate Research program, and spent the next several months researching the intersection between behavioral economics and media messaging; particularly, how they combined in rather unique fashion during the early months of the pandemic.

When Christine Suddeth 鈥21 enrolled in the 桃瘾社区 School of Performing Arts as a musical theater student, she was in the midst of recovering from a voice injury鈥攐ne that her voice teacher, PPA Professor Amanda Flynn, helped her recover from. 鈥淒oing this research opened my mind a bit more鈥攁s a performing arts major, you can get tunnel vision,鈥 said Christine. 鈥淚t was liberating in a way that I could expand my breadth of study.鈥

As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the world, the intersection between public health, safety, technological data, and the law became rather complicated. These questions prompted Joseph Peterson '22 to formulate a research topic titled 鈥淲ho Has Your Health Data, What Are They Doing with it, and What Can You Do About it?: Legal and Technological Issues Related to Contact Tracing of COVID-19 Infections.鈥