Stories

Sep. 6, 2018

More than a dozen Vassar students, all humanities and sciences majors, took part in an intensive six-week introduction to coding class over the summer. They’re now using the new knowledge to enhance their research capabilities.

Aug. 17, 2018

Assistant Prof. of Psychological Science Hadley Bergstrom and a team of faculty and students spent part of the summer using tiny microscopes to study brain activity.

Aug. 14, 2018

It’s natural for parents to want to protect their children from harm, but is there some danger in protecting them too much? Prof. of Psychological Science Abigail Baird ’91 says her research on the workings of the adolescent brain suggests that the answer is yes.

Aug. 9, 2018

Vassar students who enroll in courses taught by History Prof. Ismail Rashid can be confident his observations about youth, conflict, peacebuilding and other issues in Africa are fresh and insightful. Every spring break and summer, he returns to meet with researchers, political leaders and journalists there, and he mentors young scholars who are studying those issues.

Aug. 6, 2018

More than two dozen students collaborated with humanities faculty this summer in research projects under the auspices of Vassar’s Ford Scholar program.

May. 21, 2018

Education Prof. Christopher Bjork and three of his students collaborated on a project examining the issues facing Vassar’s international students as the campus prepares to go more global.

Apr. 26, 2018

Professor of Art Susan Kuretsky ’63 has introduced the world of art to thousands of Vassar students, some of whom have gone on to become noted professionals and scholars in the art world. In a recent conversation, Kuretsky talked about the joys of teaching.

Apr. 20, 2018

For Emma Glickman ’18, the first clues to the story of her family’s ordeal in Nazi-occupied Poland were the tiny bite marks she found on a gold locket her grandmother, Elizabeth Hoffman Glickman, had given her a few years before she died. Since then, the Vassar senior has begun to unravel the mystery further.

Apr. 19, 2018

Elizabeth Aeschlimann, Vassar’s Rachlin Director for Jewish Student Life, led 11 students through a half-semester, non-credit course on the use of Jewish ethical writing and practice to help them “align our actions with our values.”

Feb. 16, 2018

After four years of testing extra virgin olive oil from groves in Italy and California, Chemistry Prof. Miriam Rossi and an interdisciplinary team of Vassar researchers and Italian scientists have shown that this staple of Mediterranean cuisine has some remarkable health benefits.

Feb. 16, 2018

Two senior chemistry majors are investigating the structure of several plant-derived compounds to assess their antioxidant and anticancer properties.

Feb. 5, 2018

Twenty-three Vassar sophomores—a record number—are applying for admission to the dual degree program at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. The successful candidates will spend their junior year at Thayer, return to Vassar to complete their bachelor’s, and then spend a fifth year at Thayer to earn a bachelor’s in engineering.

Jan. 12, 2018

Debra Elmegreen, Maria Mitchell Professor of Astronomy at Vassar, and her husband Bruce Elmegreen, IBM astronomer, recently announced the discovery of “Little Blue Dots,” a kind of galaxy never seen before, in the Hubble Frontier Fields.

Dec. 8, 2017

Every year, dozens of Vassar students earn academic credit by venturing off-campus and working in public schools, businesses, community centers, hospitals, nonprofits, and government offices.

Nov. 16, 2017

In “Star Wars: Resistance, Rebellion and Death,” first-year students analyze the Star Wars saga from a postcolonial perspective, investigating the nature of power and exploitation, authority and subjugation.

Aug. 18, 2017

The Vassar Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program has launched 16 careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. Noyce scholars and mentors returned to campus in June to begin building an ongoing professional support system for the program’s alumnae/i.

Aug. 15, 2017

Working under the auspices of Vassar’s Undergraduate Research Summer Institute, George Whiteside ’18 and Dylan Horowitz ‘19 adapted an impulsivity test so that it can be administered not only on smart phones but also on smart watches and voice-activated virtual assistant devices such as Google Assistant.

Aug. 11, 2017

Under the auspices of the Ford Scholars Program, two Vassar students spent the summer working with Associate Prof. of Anthropology Candice Lowe Swift on an assessment of one of Poughkeepsie’s most beloved nonprofits.

Aug. 10, 2017

Under the auspices of the Ford Scholars Program, Karly Andreassen ’20 assisted Associate Prof. of Art Andrew Tallon in updating and enhancing his 360° images of cathedrals in Europe and exploring the use of 360° video to document the decay at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.

Aug. 1, 2017

Working under the direction of Associate Prof. of Anthropology April Beisaw, six Vassar students are helping the National Park Service gain a fuller understanding of what happened on FDR’s land while he and his family lived there.