The examples below are just a few of the exciting projects that have been supported by the Copeland Fund since it began in 1995. We encourage students to think creatively about how this support can contribute to unique and innovative Independent Study projects across the College!
- A Biology major was awarded $1,600 to travel to Guam to study the Brown Tree Snake’s responses to visual and pheromonal stimulation as a first step in constructing a lure to control the population of this devastating predator.
- A Sociology major was awarded $476 to attend a photography exhibit opening on queer Latinx lowriders in San Francisco to conduct participant-observation and interview the artists.
- A Music History major was awarded $760 to visit the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. to examine facsimiles of Hector Berlioz’s original work in his study of the composer’s treatise Orchestration and Instrumentation.
- An Anthropology major was awarded $1,272 to examine 442 rib cages from the Robert J. Terry Anatomical Skeletal Collection at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. to determine whether or not there is a relationship between autopsy death records and tuberculosis skeletal indicators in a study of the possible relationship between rib lesions and pulmonary tuberculosis.
- An English major was awarded $806 to travel to New York City, Indianapolis, and Traverse City to interview three of today’s most significant poets: William Pitt Root, Karen Kovacik, and Michael Delp.
- A History major was awarded $1,150 to spend a week in England gathering research on the development of canal transportation, especially the Grand Union Canal linking Birmingham and London, during and after the Industrial Revolution.
- A French and English double major was awarded $1,560 to travel to France to interview fashion and advertising photographers in Western Europe for her cross-cultural study of images of women in advertising in women’s magazines.
- A Political Science major was awarded $1,175 to travel to Scotland to interview members of parliament in his study of whether devolution of power within a state pre-empts or fuels independence movements.
- A Communication Studies major was awarded $2,000 to travel to South Africa in her attempt to create a successful AIDS awareness campaign based on traditional African storytelling.
- An Archeology major was awarded $1049 to purchase an ultrasonic bath to clean stone tools excavated in Wooster and to travel repeatedly to the Ohio State University to microscopically analyze those tools to determine how they were used and on what materials.
- A History major was awarded $547 to travel to and examine the New York Public Library’s Dorot Jewish Division’s newspaper holdings, among other archival sites, to study how Jewish gangsters were portrayed in the media and how they were viewed by the Jewish community.
- A Biology major was awarded $999 to purchase equipment and conduct measurements of how amphibian populations are being impacted by the Emerald Ash Borer in the cavities left by dead, uprooted ash trees in Ohio.
- A Philosophy major was awarded $1,163 to travel to the Université Nancy in France to attend the “Epistemology, Context, and Formalism” conference with leading epistemologists and discuss her thesis with these researchers.
- A Biochemistry and Molecular Biology major was awarded $643 to purchase commercially prepared cells infected with Histoplasma capsulatum in order to better understand its pathway of pathogenesis.
- A Russian Studies and International Relations double major was awarded $973 to attend the Fifth Russian Congress on Political Science in Moscow to analyze the current discourse concerning the evolution of the Russian Federation identity to inform predictions of Russia’s future actions and decisions.
- A Studio Art major was awarded $551 to complete large-scale printmaking and paper cutting in order to create a surrounding environment of panels, scrolls, mobiles and curtains.
- An English major was awarded $2,000 to travel to South Africa to attend National Youth Day, commemorating those children who died in the Soweto riots, as research for her novella aimed at junior high school students.