In the back of the Commencement program each year is a listing of student research projects with impressive titles like last year's entry for geology student Matthew O'Connell '96: "Electron Microprobe Measurements of the REE near the Ol-Opx-Cpx-Gar join at 19Kbar." He knew what it meant, even if hardly anybody else did. He was a senior scholar. The Senior Scholar Program, now in its 40th year, presents opportunities for intense, year-long research, extensive faculty-student collaboration and a finished work that becomes a permanent fixture in the College's Special Collections. Few are called, and fewer are chosen. On average, eight or 10 seniors pass muster, first developing an acceptable proposal for the committee that selects the projects in the spring of their junior year, then following a rigorous regimen of research, preparation and faculty oversight. The senior scholars' projects represent a significant piece of undergraduate research, but more important, say the faculty who advise them, they demand self-discipline, critical thinking and problem solving. They are excellent capstones, they say, to high achievers' college careers. Associate Professor of Computer Science Batya Friedman says the program requires, above all, a passion for study. Her advisee, Woody Pollack '97, drove the process with self-initiative and -motivation, she says. "He conceived the project and did the work. My role was to see that he was making adequate progress and that the work required sufficient rigor. Part of the educational value [derived from a senior scholar project] comes from carrying it through the various steps and bringing it to closure. It took a lot of dedication and perseverance on his part." This year, eight senior scholars completed projects, including Pollack's "Just Which Reality Do You Mean: Users' Experiences of Virtual Spaces." Reality in this case is the virtual kind, an artificial rendering of Colby's academic quadrangle created on a computer. Pollack spent several weeks making graphic representations of seven of Colby's buildings with virtual animals and people inside them. The two worlds, which Pollack dubbed Literal Colby and Dream Colby, were identical in appearance but were governed by different physical properties. In Dream Colby, users could fly. Pesky physical laws that restrict a person from, say, walking through a brick wall were dispensed with. Literal Colby people, on the other hand, had to live with the annoyance of using doorways and elevators to get where they were going. The 26 subjects in his study were divided between the two worlds and given the same set of nine tasks--for example, locating an object in a building--each of which was developed to test a different feature of the virtual world. "I was looking at these two worlds to figure out which was more efficient and more accurate," Pollack said. Friedman says the project addressed philosophical as well as technological issues. "What does it mean to create an artificial reality? Is it real or just different?" she said. "What constitutes reality?" Pollack, who completed his requirements for graduation after his junior year but had to fulfill Colby's mandated eight semesters of study, says he needed a challenge during his senior year. "I wanted to do a big independent project, and at the time virtual reality seemed like this exciting area that Colby hasn't touched on," he said. Similarly, Amanda Sprang entered her senior year worried that it might be "stifling" after her "wild, adventurous" junior year in Colby's St. Petersburg, Russia, program. Her senior scholar project, a collection of 12 essays about Russia titled "Beyond the Threshold: Life in the New Russia," was stimulating and rewarding, Sprang says. "I got to do exactly what I wanted--spend a lot of time working on something I cared about and relive the time that I spent in Russia." "The Senior Scholars Program provided the ideal vehicle for Amanda's writing, which belongs to a genre of journalistic prose grounded in cultural commentary," said Sprang's adviser, Assistant Professor of Russian Julie de Sherbinin. "Her models included ethnographies of groups in contemporary Russian society as well as such works as Hedrick Smith's Russians." De Sherbinin was impressed with Sprang's ability to put the attitudes and expectations of Russia's youth into context. "Amanda's chief observation--and one she is in a position to defend after participating in the daily lives of young Russians--is that for the first time in Russian history a generation of individuals can dream their own dreams and attempt to determine their own fates," she said. "Perhaps the most important message of Amanda's project is that young Russians are not looking for the next ticket out of their country: they are highly invested in their own artistic and intellectual traditions." "I wanted to bring closure to my Colby experience, which is now synonymous with my Russian experience," Sprang said, "and the Senior Scholar Program allowed me to do that. I can't imagine how my Colby experience would have been complete without it." Said Pollack: "Without the senior scholar project, I might have left Colby less than happy with my experience here. I needed it to top off my four years." Faculty are equally enthusiastic. Friedman says a sophomore whom she is advising already is preparing a senior scholar proposal, and she expects that trend to continue. "Computer science is ideally suited to the Senior Scholar Program, because it is project oriented," she said. "Woody may have started something here. I think we're going to have more and more students interested in doing senior scholar work. It would be great if we could have one every year." Table of Contents