As CC is becoming increasingly known for both its liberal arts education and strong science program, the Student Collaborative Research (SCoRe) program is thriving, highlighting the success CC students, alumni, and faculty are having in research.
“SCoRe is designed to holistically support Colorado College’s mission, centered around the development of habits of intellect and imagination,” says Lisa Schwartz, Assistant Director of Grants, Research, and Fellowships in the Career Center. “These meaningful research experiences allow students to learn alongside mentors as they explore new techniques, methods, and perspectives relevant to their fields. Student contributions offer unique viewpoints that often lead to publication and presentation with their faculty mentors.”
CC was recently recognized with Carnegie Classification’s new Research Colleges and Universities (RCU) designation, which highlights the significant research the College’s students and faculty conduct. CC is one of only 35 national liberal arts colleges, one of only ten liberal arts colleges in the west, and one of only three Associated Colleges of the Midwest to be designated as an RCU.
The SCoRe program provides funding and support for student-faculty research collaborations. Students and faculty work together to conduct research over the summer and then present at the Summer Symposium. SCoRe is funded by a variety of sources on campus, all aimed at providing students with the hands-on learning that CC is known for.
Luke Stanley ’25 worked with Dr. Jesús Peña las summer on their project, “Sexual Crosses with the Mucoromycete Phycomyces blakesleeanus.”
“This project was everything I had been craving from Colorado College—an opportunity to practice laboratory mycology,” says Stanley, an Organismal Biology and Ecology (OBE) major. “Through Dr. Peña’s guidance, I was able to learn and develop a procedure to synchronize the sexual reproduction of the fungus Phycomyces blakesleeanus. We developed this procedure over the course of two research blocks and two months of summer research. Thankfully, at the end of our summer work, we finally got close to achieving the result we were after: the synchronization of the mating process. We then submitted this methods paper to JoVE, and it is currently in the process of publication.”
Peña and Stanley were first introduced in the fall of Stanley’s junior year, and they continued to meet throughout the year to discuss possible research opportunities within the Organismal Biology and Ecology Department.
“We decided to develop a methods paper focused on synchronizing the mating of Phycomyces blakesleeanus,” Stanley says. “This project would continue the research Dr. Peña had already been working on, but it was designed to be manageable enough for an undergraduate to take the lead. It was the perfect opportunity for me.”
Stanley says that presenting at the Summer Research and Internship Symposium was a key moment in his college career.
“I have always enjoyed public speaking, and presenting my research was a great opportunity to showcase my work to the larger CC community,” Stanley says. “I distinctly remember attending the Summer Symposium as a sophomore and being inspired by all the opportunities that CC had to offer. I hope that my presentation had a similar effect on someone else.”
“SCoRe is designed to holistically support Colorado College’s mission, centered around the development of habits of intellect and imagination. These meaningful research experiences allow students to learn alongside mentors as they explore new techniques, methods, and perspectives relevant to their fields. Student contributions offer unique viewpoints that often lead to publication and presentation with their faculty mentors.”
Lisa Schwartz, CC Career Center Assistant Director of Grants, Research and Fellowships
Cate Rosenbaum ’25, Ollie Beland ’25, Ty Kruger ’25, and Trenten Chalik ’26 worked with Faculty Collaborator and Associator Professor and Chair of Chemistry Dr. Amy Dounay on their project, “Green Solvent Optimization for Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesis of a Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Prodrug,” during 2024 SCoRe. Most of the students had the opportunity to work with Dounay previously, so they were able to continue similar research and focus on optimizing what didn’t work before.
“SCoRe definitely helped me understand research in an environment that I was already familiar with, and I was really excited to be able to continue this project over the summer with my lab mates,” Rosenbaum says. “I was also excited to have the opportunity to present this research at conferences, as it gave me an idea of the ‘soft’ side of research—sharing the results and communicating them with others unfamiliar with the work. That aspect really helped me prepare for other research opportunities.”
Rosenbaum says the students were doing research in the lab intensively throughout the summer and had occasional days dedicated to writing and reviewing literature related to the project.
In addition to individual research conducted by faculty and students, SCoRe offers workshops throughout the program, taught by both CC and guest faculty and staff, aimed at providing a holistic education that targets all aspects of research, from how to create a successful funding application to how to convey research through a poster presentation.
“A poster really is a chance for a student to be creative to some degree, and to design a pithy, visual narrative of their SCoRe investigations and research,” says Dr. Steve Getty, Director of the Quantitative Reasoning and The Colket Center, who teaches a SCoRe workshop on how to create a poster that effectively conveys the research findings.
During the session, Getty and students go over the appropriate number of visuals versus text, how to keep graphs and diagrams readily digestible for a viewer, and how to summarize in a few sentences for the viewer, instead of reading the poster to them. Getty also has students critically evaluate some examples of his own posters from professional conferences. Getty, who has worked with SCoRe for the past seven years, also helps with data analysis and graphing aesthetics, depending on the student’s project.
Writing Center Specialist Roy Jo Sartin conducts a workshop each year teaching students how to successfully apply for fellowships, scholarships, grants, and graduate school. She also works with former SCoRe researchers as they apply for subsequent opportunities.
“In my workshop, I explain how students can leverage their SCoRE experience in subsequent undergraduate opportunities and as they apply for post-graduate options like graduate school, fellowships, research, and more,” says Sartin, who in the last year helped CC students and alumni earn more than half a million dollars in grants and post-graduate funding.
Sarah Hinkle, Director of the Speaking Center, has worked with SCoRe for about 10 years and has several roles with the program. She teaches two workshops during the program, where she demonstrates how students can efficiently present their research through posters and their presentations. Students also book one-on-one appointments with Hinkle to get specific advice on their research presentation strategies.
“Research is complex and challenging to organize in a poster, so allowing space to let people take it in while staying attentive is key,” Hinkle advises. “If they are engaged in a question, then that is an opening offer to discuss the poster or share in mutual research interests. Students will learn how to develop a quick narrative that underscores the need and inherent value of their research and how their role has contributed to reaching the goal of the larger work at play. Students develop quick and direct ‘impacts’ for their listeners, which offers a quick snapshot of their research.”
Last summer, Xinran Wang ’25 and Professor of Pyschology Dr. Tomi-Ann Roberts worked on “I Know What This Is: Disembodied Deductive Aesthetic Attention Flattens Aesthetic Experience.”
“Nowadays, in our attention economy, the overwhelming presence of digital media encourages disembodied and fragmented aesthetic attention,” says Wang, a Psychology major. “Absorbed aesthetic attention has become increasingly difficult for us, leading to a diminishing depth of aesthetic experiences. My research explored the phenomenology of absorbed, embodied aesthetic attention, which is inspired from the British writer Vernon Lee’s work on psychological aesthetics, who believes that an aesthetic experience is to ‘meet the object halfway.’”
“SCoRe definitely helped me understand research in an environment that I was already familiar with, and I was really excited to be able to continue this project over the summer with my lab mates. I was also excited to have the opportunity to present this research at conferences, as it gave me an idea of the ‘soft’ side of research—sharing the results and communicating them with others unfamiliar with the work. That aspect really helped me prepare for other research opportunities.”
Cate Rosenbaum ’25
Wang came up with her research idea first and then applied to SCoRe, but the research idea kept evolving and ended up very different than what it was in her initial proposal.
“Dr. Roberts was an active collaborator who remained deeply invested in our project throughout the process and provided me with invaluable support,” Wang says. “She not only respects my new ideas but also shows genuine enthusiasm for them, and she never discourages me from pursuing ambitious or adventurous goals.”
Computer Science majors Brooktie Frogge ’26, Erin Liedeker ’26, and Josh Park ’27 participated in SCoRe last summer under the guidance of Dr. Janet Burge, Associate Professor and co-chair of Mathematics and Computer Science.
The basis for the group’s Distributed, Fragmented Software Design Meetings project was that meetings are a crucial part of collaboration, but it is often a challenge to effectively capture and utilize information from the meeting. The research project was trying to address this by studying how information is shared, captured, and retrieved during software development meetings. Frogge, Liedeker, and Park came up with the idea of Recap based on meeting technology developed by a professor at the University of California Irvine. Recap allows users to browse and search information from a meeting efficiently through an intuitive sorting filter and tagging feature. By the end of the summer, the group was able to achieve a working version of Recap.
“This was my first job that involved programming, so I was able to see what the industry was like and the workload I should expect on a daily basis,” Park says. “For future research opportunities, I feel that I am more mentally prepared and will do a better job.”
The students met with Burge every day to go over their progress and research. Park says that Burge encouraged the students to think for themselves. “The only thing she was strict about was how she wanted the product to look, which actually helped develop a very polished final product,” Parks says.
Frogge, Liedeker, and Park worked on the project for ten weeks last summer. They began the process by collecting data and drawing mock-ups. Once the project was completed, Burge helped the students identify any bugs. “We created additional user stories based on software designer interviews and drew up mockups based on this feedback,” Park says.
The 2025 SCoRe cohort looks to continue the strength of CC research, exploring a diverse range of fields and topics.
“This summer, I’ll be researching how we can design accessible technology that supports inclusive and equitable learning,” says Zahara Love ’26, a Computer Science major who will be working with Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science Dr. Varsha Koushik during SCoRe this summer. “While I don’t know all the details of our study yet, I’m excited to explore how digital tools and technologies can be made more usable for everyone.”
There are about 100 students conducting research with faculty this summer, Schwartz says.
The upcoming research is very exciting and includes many departments on campus.
Esther Ineza ’26 will be conducting research with Associate Professor of Molecular Biology Dr. Sara Hanson on centromere evolution in yeast, specifically in the Saccharomycodaceae family. “We’re looking at evidence for point centromeres through a combination of computational and wet lab techniques, including chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) with MNase digestion,” says Ineza, a Molecular Biology major. “I was drawn to this topic because of my growing interest in genetics, evolution, and the mechanisms that underlie chromosome behavior—especially in understudied organisms like yeast.”
This is Ineza’s first time formally participating in the SCoRe program and she says she is really excited about the structure and support it offers.
“I’ve heard great things from friends who’ve done SCoRe before, and it’s a fantastic way to grow as a researcher while being in community with other student scholars,” she says. “I definitely plan to attend some of the SCoRe workshops! I think they’ll be valuable not only for strengthening my research skills but also for learning how to communicate science more effectively and think more broadly about my academic and career goals.”