Adrien Tinsley Symposium Fall ’23
The Adrien Tinsley Program (ATP) supports student-led undergraduate research for both creative and STEM-related projects. Funding is avaible in the form of grants up to $5,000. The program’s symposium was held on Friday October 20 in the Moakley Center, where participants showcased their unique projects to the public.
Megan Moore (she/her), a senior secondary education major, participated in the ATP program with her project titled, “‘Thou Shalt See How Apt It is to Learn’: Making Shakespeare Accessible to English Learners.” Moore, a Shakespeare lover and advocate for inclusivity, believes it is vital for the literature to be taught to all students, including those who may not know English as their first language. Thus, she spent the summer of 2023 determined to develop a research-supported teaching strategy to make Shakespeare easier to learn for multilingual secondary school students.
Moore began her research by interviewing four multilingual college students to identify their struggles with learning Shakespeare in American schooling. From there, she produced several suggested approaches to teaching the literature so that multilingual students can develop the necessary skills to comprehend the work. These approaches included using lots of multimedia, such as images and videos, and teaching the works with cultural context. “Peer learning is great for language acquisition,” Moore said about utilizing small groups in the classroom as another learning strategy. As a result of her project, Moore created a resource guide for educators, compiling all of her suggested approaches and tools to be incorporated in the classroom.
In the vast realm of STEM, Elyse Tavares’s (she/her) project, “Investigation of Electron Transfer in the KshA-KshB-R286A Protein Complex from Mycobacterium tuberculosis,” proved to be impressive. Tavares conducted an experiment with the intent to “design an inhibitor that would act as an antibiotic against tuberculosis.” In doing so, she created a mutation in a subunit of a bacteria in order to prevent a chemical reaction. “Pretend it’s two sides,” Tavares explained. “You have a bridge connecting between and if you take away that bridge, we’re trying to see if that interaction still happens, meaning that reaction could be happening somewhere else other than where we’re looking.” Using other students’ previous mutation data, Tavares will compare the results to her project to determine the best mutation for stopping the chemical reaction.
More information regarding the Adrien Tinsley Program can be found at https://www.bridgew.edu/academics/undergraduate-research/student-grants.
