Faculty & Research
Collaboration with a faculty member can introduce students to new career paths and provide experiences comparable to those of graduate students. Many Oberlin students coauthor articles with faculty, which are published in scholarly journals and presented at national meetings.Oberlin’s emphasis on student-faculty research dates back to the 1880s, when Professor Frank F. Jewett took student Charles Martin Hall under his wing. Hall graduated and soon after discovered the inexpensive process for extracting aluminum from its ore that made mass production of aluminum possible.
Below you’ll find more examples of how Oberlin students are helping to change the world every day through significant research with their professors.
Grants Aid Investigation of 12-Tone Music
The work of Brian Alegant, associate professor of music theory, and his student assistant, Marcus Lofthouse, a senior from Billings, Montana, exemplifies the close collaboration and rich opportunities available to both sides of the research team. Alegant is researching the organizing principles of the 12-tone music of Luigi Dallapiccola, an Italian composer who lived from 1904 to 1975, in preparation for a forthcoming book.Read Full Story
Searching for New Ways to Diagnose Ovarian Cancer
When Rebecca Whelan stumbled across an article on ovarian cancer, she was shocked to discover that the survival rate for 70 percent of the women diagnosed with the disease was only 15 to 20 percent. The article motivated Whelan to begin searching for new, noninvasive ways to detect the disease in its earliest stages, thereby improving the outcome of women diagnosed with the deadly cancer.Helping Whelan in the lab are Anita Ofori-Addo '06, Nolan Pearson '07, Emily Magorian '08, and Matthew Thayer '08. Each student is experimenting with a different technique--techniques that may one day be used to screen all women for ovarian cancer, just like doctors use mammograms to test women for breast cancer today.
Read Full Story
One-Billionth of a Meter
Jason Belitsky and Chris Boyd ’07 stare silently into a small tray filled with tiny black particles. Belitsky, an assistant professor new to Oberlin’s chemistry and biochemistry department this year, is investigating the structure of melanin, a pigment found in the skin that plays a role in skin cancer.Many people are familiar with the word, if only because of a passing lesson on the epidermis in high school biology. Truth is, scientists know very little about this important component.
Read Full Story