Sweet and savory research
From equine showmanship to fetal alcohol syndrome, this summer’s 62 col- laborative research projects explored the good, the bad, the controversial, and the just plain fascinating. Having run some preliminary taste- testing in a perceptions course taught by neuroscientist Robert Hallock last spring, Maura LaBrecque ’14 organized a full trial for their summer project comparing natural and artifical sweeteners. She asked a panel of 17 Skidmore students to taste sugar, stevia, Sweet’N Lo, Equal, and xylitol in varying concentrations and to rate them by their intensity of sweetness and bitterness. Xylitol ranked closest to sugar, while Sweet’N Lo was found to be markedly higher in both sweetness and bitterness. “It really packs a punch,” LaBrecque says. Other students researched aspects of
divorce and forgiveness, quick and easy malaria testing, online retailing, “greedy” computer processors, hurri- canes, galaxies, The Canterbury Tales, the
Library legacy
“A young man came to the circulation desk to check out a book, and when I saw the name on his ID card, I men- tioned that he reminded me of a girl who used to work here, and he said, ‘That’s my mother.’” That’s just one of Mary O’Don- nell’s legacy stories from her work at Skidmore’s Scribner Library between arriving in 1976 and retir- ing this past spring.
O’Donnell herself is part of a legacy family of Skid- more employees, as her mother, Katherine O’Don-
nell, was a housekeeper on both the old and new campuses. A native Saratogian and a lifelong lover of words and ideas, Mary O’Donnell especially enjoyed at- tending talks by prominent speakers at Skidmore. While still in high school, she asked a teacher to take a group to campus for a talk by New York Senator Robert F. Ken nedy. She says, “A friend and I stood
10 SCOPE FALL 2013
along the wall inside College Hall, which was full. Senator Kennedy came down our way and we shook his hand. It was really exciting.” Later, as a Skid- more employee, O’Don- nell heard such speakers as Berna dette Devlin, the youngest person elected to Parliament in Northern Ireland; US Representative Shirley Chis holm; and actor and activist Charl- ton Heston. Chip Cart er, speaking on campus dur- ing his father’s presiden- tial campaign, spotted O’Donnell with her cam-
era, gave it to an aide, “and we stood to- gether and had our picture taken,” she recalls.
As a Scribner circulation and public access assistant, she saw enormous tech- nological changes. In the beginning, books had sign-out cards, which were counted daily. “When items were re- turned, we had to match all the books
and book cards. Overdue notices were handwritten weekly and sent through campus mail,” she says. Scribner Library introduced computers in 1985 and an automated checkout system in 1991. The current system tracks overdue books, fines, course reserves, renewals, “and so much more than anything we thought of 40 years ago.”
Her favorite part of the job: “I have a special place in my heart for the many student workers I trained over the years. We average about 30 a year, about 1,000 students have passed through our ‘boot camp.’ I now find familiar names and faces on Facebook and in Scope. I love to see what they’ve been doing and how their families have grown.” O’Donnell’s retirement plans include more reading, volunteering for her church, and perhaps selling the family homestead, owned by O’Donnells since 1902. “My time at Skidmore has flown by,” she says, “and I feel lucky to have had a job that I loved.” —AW
Vietnamese stock market, childhood fears, faith in the workplace in three very different coun- tries, and more. All told, nearly 50 faculty mentors joined 85 stu- dents at the final pres- entation of posters and PowerPoints.
“It just gets stronger and stronger—these students are amazing,” marveled trustee Sara Lee Schupf ’62, who created the $1.1 million Schupf Scholars Program, focused on support- ing interdisciplinary projects and female students in fields where women are typi- cally underrepresented.
For the rising seniors, the five- to ten- week summer experience was an oppor- tunity to get a running start on research they’ll continue through the year and submit as senior theses. Most of the stu-
dents also presented their research at Sep- tember’s undergrad research conference of the New York Six consortium, hosted this year by St. Lawrence University. Ulti- mately, many students will see their work published in academic journals. Hallock’s students have had six or seven papers ac- cepted in the last year, and he’s confident that LaBrecque will get her work into print, perhaps in the Oxford-published Chemical Senses. —DF, SR
PHIL SCALIA
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