IDA Mount Holyoke College Institutional Digital Archive
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Knowledge and Death in Animal Care: An Ethnographic Project in a Chicago Animal Shelter
No full textThis thesis traces the development of authoritative knowledge about animal care and euthanasia as developed in the Anti-Cruelty Society, a Chicago animal shelter.Sociology & Anthropolog
Dams and Dredging: An Overview of Mount Holyoke College's Lake History
No full textA brief history of the creation, expansion and maintenance of Mount Holyoke College's beloved Upper and Lower Lakes and associated dams. Also included are research methods and protocol pertaining to creating a photo database using materials from the ASC and Professor Bob Schwartz's Historical Atlas.Spring semester, 201
Local to Global: Exploring the Digital Age through Small Business
No full textHow do small start-ups get their funding and make a name for themselves? Public relations! With the PR firm I worked for this summer, I helped small start-ups get funding and reach out. They may not all be the next Zuckerbergs but many of them have products that are working towards a better tomorrow in the US and abroad.Globalization and digitalization have drastically changed the way industries function today. So how do small businesses fit into the picture? This panel is comprised of students who have worked in Video Production, PR, Marketing, and Photography across the globe. Yet all of us decided to work in small business organizations. Why? Because of the unique benefits that interns can only get through working with small organizations. As a panel we will discuss both these pros and the cons that come with working in this environment, in addition to the realities of working in the media and marketing fields. Join us
Tinkering Together: Creating Accessible, Inclusive and Equitable Approaches to Tinkering Education at Makerspaces
No full textA makerspace is a setting for informal and experiential STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) learning experiences. Work within the makerspace values the process of tinkering for exploration of ideas and materials over the project that may be created. The guiding question for this research is: How do we create accessible, inclusive, and equitable STEAM learning experiences for students in informal learning settings? “Soaring Socks: a Catapult Tinkering Challenge Exhibit” examines issues pertaining to accessibility and inclusion within tinkering and makerspaces. Participants use tools to design, build, test and iterate their catapult with an objective of launching a sock into a laundry basket. Students gain knowledge of the engineering design process, Newton’s laws of motion and the ability to work with data science. After evaluating the activity, recommendations include utilizing process-oriented questions for facilitating tinkering with students, expanding community access to tinkering through mobile activities, and providing multigenerational learning opportunities. Educators must recognize students’ cultural and other identities when designing and facilitating activities. Access and inclusion to tinkering are pathways toward equity in learning.Critical Social Though
#21stCentury
No full textDuring my internship, I worked for a start-up PR firm called Evil Genius Group, located in Manhattan. It was lead by Victor Cipolla, a man who had vast experience working for other firms before deciding to branch off and start his own. When I began, the firm had just turned one year old, but it already had an impressive amount of clients. I soon learned that when Vic warned me that there was no such thing as “an average day in the PR world,” he was being quite genuine. Every time I stepped into the office, I had no idea what kind of task lay ahead of me. I might be making phone calls, searching for event sponsors, sitting in on meetings, or running around New York searching for venues. My firm also worked for a variety of different clients; one week I was ghost writing posts for a Pilates blog, and the next I was overseeing the casting of male models for a fashion show. The work didn’t stop at the office either; due to different time zones and shifting social media trends, I had to keep a close eye on everything that was going on. Keeping one’s finger on the pulse of social media was essential to helping our clients gain a significant following. Overall, this internship helped me learn to think on my feet, and adapt to nearly any situation.All four of us did internships centered around utilizing social media for various organizations. We worked in bustling places across the globe, and had similar experiences. Whether it was a fashion show in New York City or Lahore, both posed last minute obstacles that had to be worked around. Unlike most desk jobs, social media puts a lot of emphasis on interpersonal relations. No amount of seminar classes could have prepared us for all the conversations we had to navigate; especially one-on-one meetings with unhappy clients. We all had to think on our feet and learn to adjust to changes on the fly. This new kind of work atmosphere also gave us a chance to reflect on our expectations versus reality. There were many things we were anticipating on our first day, and we left with something completely different. Overall, we all learned a lot of things that can’t be taught in the classroom, and came out with a whole new social network
The Interdisciplinary Nature of Law
No full textFor the past few years I have been increasingly interested in working with federal law enforcement agencies, particularly as a Special Agent. However, I have always felt too small and unfit for a rigorous and at times physically demanding job. This past summer I interned at the New England Drug Enforcement Administration Base (DEA) and I learned that no matter how small and intimidated you may be, if you work hard for what you want, anything is achievable. I worked primarily in the office of Task Force Two, an enforcement group based in Boston and its surrounding cities. When not working in tracking down street level criminals, I worked with the DEA Divergence department, where I worked on more white level drug dealing and misuse. Utilizing my critical thinking skills, my technology and computer skills, as well as my hard work ethic, I proved myself invaluable to the office. This internship was extremely impactful not only for my future career possibilities, but for my own self-confidence. There are so many jobs that are “male dominated”, but working with the DEA this past summer was eye opening in the sense that even as a 5’1 female, I am just as valued as a 6’5 man. Pursuing a career as a Special Agent does not mean that you have to be a stereotypical stature; it is actually the opposite. What so many young women like myself do not know is that these types of agencies, the FBI, DEA, and CIA, are looking for more diversity in all ways. So come to my panel and learn more about my experiences at the DEA and what it means to be a woman in federal law enforcement!Law is a common factor that cuts across and brings together social, economic, commercial, and political institutions in a majority of states, worldwide. Due to its intersectional presence and applicability, the legal profession attracts individuals with broad based expertise in various disciplines. Through their internships, the members of this panel discovered that legal thought serves as a foundation for the primary activities for an assortment of organizations, both public and private. Their diverse areas of study in history, philosophy, international relations, economics, and psychology found unique applications in activities including legislative drafting, family law, contract law, financial regulation, federal law enforcement, legal research, and the collection and management of data. The panelists successfully honed their mastery of several transferable skills - research, analysis, and effective communication - that the rigor of a liberal arts education inculcates. These have aided in the panelists’ exemplary success as legal interns across the globe. Having worked at a commercial law firm, a corporate law firm, a family law firm, a consulting firm, a chamber of commerce, and a federal law enforcement administration, our panelists hope to reflect on how their college experiences guided their decisions to apply for and succeed in their summer internships. Additionally, their presentations will address the challenges that the legal policies of various states or sectors encounter and sometimes give rise to. The panelists will reflect on how their diverse skills and knowledge enabled them to shape incisive perspectives on and effect creative, yet pragmatic, change in the organizations, industries, or even countries in which they lived and worked
Robots and Recognition: Subject/Technology Relationships in the Algorithmic Age
No full textRobots and Recognition: Subject/Technology Relationships in the Algorithmic Age explores dyadic interactions between subject/digital technology pairings. With the “subject” of the dyad being either the individual human or human populations; I’ll be exploring how technologies such as the facial recognition camera, algorithmic economic processor, and Facebook status generator all necessitate certain relationships rooted in recognition of the subject by the technology, and vice-versa. Rooting my analysis in historical and contemporary theories in posthuman affect, technocapitalism, military and pedestrian technologies, I question how the dyad can or cannot exist within certain thresholds of recognition, as well as how the dyad can produce a misrecognition. In my thesis, I explore the multiple misrecognitions possible within the aforementioned technologies, and the throttling misrecognition causes to such technologies, as well as the humans interacting with them.Gender Studie
Intersections Between Entreprenuership, Technology, and Education
No full textOsmo (www.playosmo.com) is a high-impact edutech start-up in Silicon Valley with a creative, crazy team 25 people and I was lucky enough to be a part of the team this past summer. My journey at Osmo gave me important duties and responsibilities where I directly built results that would affect hundreds and thousands of customers such as improving the website, creating educational tools for teachers, and designing swag. It gets challenging and difficult, but at the same time the great food, adorable office dog, and work family that is Osmo made my summer beyond rewardingWhat do internships at a Silicon Valley tech startup, a NYC ecommerce startup, a NYC academic publishing press, and an asset management firm in Hong Kong have in common? Through collaboration in small and high impact teams, we’ve been flexible and resourceful, and are proud to have developed remarkable leadership skills and increased autonomy in our chosen industries. Our experiences ranged from partnership building and educational app development, to training in product development, sales, and customer analysis. In our panel, we hope to address both the challenges we have faced, and how they prompted our growth, respectively proffering four unique perspectives from internships in progressively intersectional fields
Assessing the potential use of microtraces of gastropod predation as a diagnostic for predator-prey interactions in the fossil record
No full textPredatory gastropods have left signs of boring predation in the fossil record as early as the Cambrian (McMenamin and Schulte McMenamin, 1990; putative Proterozoic examples [e.g., Bengtson and Zhao, 1992] remain controversial). Through studying drill holes in prey, we can better understand predator-prey interactions in marine communities. It has been proposed that further study of the interior of drill holes yields microtraces left by the radular teeth during the drilling process (Schiffbauer et al., 2008; Tyler and Schiffbauer, 2012). The pattern and orientation of the traces can be used to associate predator with prey and act as a diagnostic feature to identify the predator.
Trace fossils can provide great insight into past environments, but only when they are well preserved. Through assessing one hundred and eighty drill holes using scanning electron microscopy, I provide here evidence suggesting the limited presence of predatory microtraces. Interpreting shell deterioration and extrapolating the observed degradation of modern specimens to hypothetical paleoenvironments suggests that preservation of such minute traces would be poor and would thus negate the purpose of creating such a diagnostic. Additionally, the current understanding of the drilling process suggests that the preservation of microtraces within the drill hole margins is an infrequent occurrence. This may be due to the fact that before utilizing their radular teeth, predatory gastropods deploy secretions from the accessory boring organ (ABO) to break down the shell surface, lessening the preservation potential of predatory microtraces (Carriker, 1969).
This study has discovered porcellaneous rims surrounding the drill holes in the Miocene Saxolucina. Further study into these rims may provide additional insight into the drilling strategy of naticid gastropods.Geolog
