Hendrix Odyssey Program Announces Project Funding for October 2020 Cycle

Despite the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hendrix students and faculty are still engaging in Odyssey projects and receiving funding. The Hendrix Committee on Engaged Learning is pleased to announce the recipients of Odyssey grants for the October 2020 cycle. Since 2005, the Committee on Engaged Learning has awarded $4,427,335.71 in competitive Odyssey grants to support 2,093 projects by Hendrix students and faculty. In this cycle, 10 projects received $13,988 in grants.

Jayla King

Scientists for Social Justice Podcast

Category: Global Awareness

Sponsor: Dr. Laura MacDonald

Jayla King and Dr. Laura MacDonald will work together to develop a new podcast that incorporates the unique perspective of scientists. They will focus on issues of social injustice in the higher educational system, especially as they relate to the scientific disciplines. In the podcast, they will highlight and discuss work done by scientists from diverse backgrounds, celebrate the accomplishments of scientists from historically marginalized groups, review literature, and talk with guest speakers about actionable solutions that lead to impactful change.

Bianca Littlepage

Tracking Revolutionary Art With Brooklyn Art Museum

Category: Artistic Creativity

Sponsor: Prof. Melissa Gill

Bianca Littlepage will participate in The Brooklyn Art Museum Sketchbook Project. Each participating artist fills a small book and returns it to the museum. In her sketchbook, Littlepage will track the evolution of revolutionary visual art movements, beginning with what is considered by art historian Kenneth Clark to be the “first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention”: The Third of May by Francisco Goya. When completed, her sketchbook will join others in the museum’s archived collection that travels to popups, exhibitions and installations across North America.

Cole McVay

decARcerate Solitary Confinement Cell Reconstruction

Category: Service to the World

Sponsor: Prof. Ann Muse

Cole McVay will design and build a model solitary confinement cell that can be a teaching tool to raise awareness about prison abuses. McVay will work with decARcerate, an organization whose goal is ending the use of solitary confinement in Arkansas. The finished piece will be the actual scale of a real cell, and it will be transported across the state for viewing by citizens and policy makers.

Kashti Shah

Elite Hospice Volunteering

Category: Service to the World

Sponsor: Julie Brown

Kashti Shah will volunteer with Elite Hospice to provide companionship and assistance to hospice patients near her hometown in North East Arkansas. She hopes to gain experience interacting with patients, which will increase her emotional competence when dealing with the grief and troubles of patients and family. Working with hospice patients will also allow Shah to serve her community while comforting and supporting others during a vulnerable time.  

Rachel Stewart

Health and Legal System Lab Research

Category: Undergraduate Research

Sponsor: Dr. Jennifer Peszka

This fall, psychology student Rachel Stewart has been working remotely for the Health and Legal System Lab (HEALS) as a research assistant under the supervisor of Dr. Melissa Zielinski at University of Arkansas Medical School. She has participated in projects such as the COVID-19 Prison Project and Implementation and Effectiveness of Cognitive Processing Therapy in Community Corrections. Stewart will present the findings of her work at the lab to a group of both Hendrix students and fellow UAMS colleagues through Zoom due to COVID-19.

Dr. Mark Goadrich

Solving Real-world Problems with Tools from Mathematics and Computer Science: The COMAP International Contest in Mathematical Modeling

Category: Special Projects

The 37th International Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) will be held Feb. 4 – 8, 2021. Sponsored by COMAP, a non-profit organization focused on promoting modeling and applications in mathematics education, this contest requires students to work in teams of three over a weekend to tackle real–world mathematical modeling problems. Dr. Mark Goadrich will supervise nine students, divided into three teams, for this virtual contest. Over the previous six years, four Hendrix teams earned an Honorable Mention, placing them in the top 50% of all teams, and three teams earned a Meritorious distinction, placing them in the top 11% worldwide.

Dr. Julie Gunderson

Food and Agribusiness Webinar Series

Category: Professional & Leadership Development

One Hendrix student will work remotely as an intern at the Arkansas Department of Agriculture during the Spring semester of 2021, in this project coordinated by Dr. Julie Gunderson. The internship focuses on the development of a Food and Agribusiness Webinar Series, which will feature nationally and internationally recognized speakers. The student will be involved in the development and management of the hardware and software, the promotion of the Webinars via social media, and the editing and posting of the Webinars to online platforms.

Dr. Rod Miller

Paris Residency 2021

Category: Undergraduate Research

Conditioned on the lifting of travel bans, Dr. Rod Miller will take art students Anna Bivens, Jalache Davis, Julia Hooper, Addie Race to Paris in May to investigate the art of the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Each student will select a work of art based on personal interests, put that work of art into an historical and physical context, and understand it from the point of view of the artist.  Each participant will produce an in-depth research paper on the chosen artwork.

Dr. Caitlin Scott

Lesson-plan development to introduce diverse scientists to general chemistry students

Category: Special Projects

According to the National Science Foundation and the PEW Research Center, Black and Latinx people are underrepresented in the STEM fields for reasons including, but not limited to implicit bias, race-based discrimination, the lack of Black and Latinx role models, and discouragement to enter these fields. To encourage and support more students from marginalized groups to continue their studies in the sciences, Dr. Caitlin will hire three student assistants who will research and interview chemists from groups traditionally under-represented in the sciences. The student assistants will identify readings and create discussion boards for students enrolled in the Spring 2021 General Chemistry II course. Based on the questions posed in the discussion board, student assistants will contact their chosen scientists and conduct an interview over Teams to learn about the scientist and their background, which will be shown to the General Chemistry students.

Dr. Martin Shedd

Hendrix Latin Play

Category: Special Projects

Dr. Martin Shedd will lead students in The Hendrix Latin Play project, which challenges students to translate and adapt Classical literature to modern audiences. Students select a comedy by the Roman playwright Plautus to transform into a 30-minute script, balancing the need to preserve the structure and situations of the ancient comedy with the goal of producing a work that conveys humor in the present day. The script is composed through a collaborative process that requires each student involved to consider the author’s intention, the source and construction of comedy, and how best to portray these features to an unfamiliar audience. The Latin Play culminates with performances for the Hendrix campus and, if possible, the University of Arkansas. This project is also underwritten by the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Programs in Literature and Language.