Junior Annika Barron is headed toward a career in medicine and is deeply concerned with the impact of the climate crisis on human health. With the support of the Glynn Program, she recently joined some 35,000 delegates at COP-27, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt. She says, “This experience definitely reinvigorated my passions for pursuing justice through the climate crisis, but was also essential in showing me more of the intricate intersections between medicine and climate."

While she may be majoring in neuroscience and behavior, Ese Omoijuanfo’s senior thesis project took a different direction. Omoijuanfo focuses on motivations for volunteering in low-trust societies. With the aid of a Glynn grant, she recently traveled to Romania to conduct interviews with Ukrainian refugees and volunteers lending them aid and support. Ese remarks that her research trip deeply impacted her, noting, "I think that when war is across the ocean, we are not impacted by the human element….For me, it was life-changing to witness this courage and resilience. It gave me perspective to see their hope and kindness.”

Senior Gabby Siaosi is a double major in biology and classics, but her senior thesis explores an entirely different topic: the career of the Irish poet Padraic Colum, who traveled to Hawaii in the early 20th century to compile an important early collection of Hawaiian folklore. Supported by a Glynn grant, Gabby recently traveled to Dublin to conduct research in the National Folklore Collection, which houses millions of manuscripts and thousands of hours of audio recordings. There, she deepened her understanding of Irish folklore and culture: "For a whole week, I was able to comb through records housed there, as well as venturing out into Dublin to experience modern Irish culture."

Garrett Pacholl spent the summer of 2022 in the archives at the University of Birmingham in the UK, where he studied the papers of British missionaries in 19th-century India. His research investigates how missionaries promoted both interreligious conflict and British nationalism in British India. For Pacholl, the project's most rewarding aspect was visiting the archives, which allowed him to "connect the dots to answer my research questions." Pacholl's interest in the relationship between religion and conflict has shaped his plans to study international policy and peacebuilding work after graduation.