Holy Cross to Hold Sixth Annual Student Academic Conference

Three Fenwick Scholars to Present Their Work

The College of the Holy Cross will host Academic Conference 2006 from April 26 through April 29. The four-day conference is designed to provide students from a broad spectrum of academic disciplines with an opportunity to present the results of their independent work. The programs, projects, poster sessions, and performances by students are the results of student work over one or two semesters under the guidance of faculty members.

Approximately 300 Holy Cross students will be involved in the conference this year.

Representing a fraction of the independent and group-project opportunities of which Holy Cross students have taken advantage this year, the conference includes works from the arts, social sciences, humanities and natural sciences. Students will present an extraordinary array of topics: ranging from reports on their independent study abroad in Strasbourg, Dijon and Cameroon; to a study of media bias in major league baseball award voting; to research and field work in the deaf community; to gender identities across generations; to the study of the biology and chemistry of protein splicing; to their research of the Blackstone River’s ecology.

This year’s conference also boasts three Fenwick Scholars, the most in the College’s history. Daniel Ricciardi ’06 will present "From Possession to Insanity: Early American Perceptions of Mental Illness in the Late Colonial and Early National Period" on April 26 at 4 p.m. in the Rehm Library. A second presentation will follow by Timothy Duffy ’06, "From Court to Collar: Post-Elizabethan Poetics and the Submissive Stance" at 5 p.m. in the Rehm Library. Ellen Gasparovic ’06 will lecture on "Strange New Universe: A Study of Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometrics" on April 27 at 4 p.m. in the Rehm Library.

The Fenwick Scholar Award is one of the College’s oldest and most prestigious academic distinctions. Departmental nominees design, with several advisors, a program of study leading to a significant research or creative project that will be an entire senior-year curriculum.

A reception, open to the entire Holy Cross community, will be held on April 26 at 6 p.m. in Moran Lounge on the fourth floor of Smith Hall.

The conference is sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Dean of the College, Academic Conference 2004 is free and open to the public.