By Hanna Cortright
At the University of Puget Sound, undergraduate students get the unique opportunity to conduct summer research for 10 weeks on a topic of their choosing with direct support from a faculty research advisor. Each year, more than 100 Puget Sound students take on projects studying topics across various disciplines to present their research findings at the Summer Research Symposium, which took place this year on Sept. 10.
Students go through a thorough application process and work closely with their faculty advisors to develop their research topics, questions, and themes. When students finalize their ideas, they submit a project proposal. After approval, students receive university-backed stipends, and some who applied for extra financial support receive grant funding for travel expenses and external costs.
Participants can complete their research locally with summer housing provided by the school or travel internationally. Not all students choose to travel for their research due to limited funding and financial constraints.
However, for students at Puget Sound who want to spend the academic year on campus, summer research allows them to travel abroad without having to do a semester-long study abroad program. For sophomore student-athlete Bria Metcalf-Lindenburger (‘29), traveling internationally was an integral part of her research.
Metcalf-Lindenburger traveled to Norway to conduct research on Norwegian long-distance running culture. When it came to picking her research topic, Metcalf-Lindenburger took into account her background as a student-athlete and her academic major and minor: “I’m majoring in exercise science, I didn’t want to do an exercise science kind of lab or physiological testing so I combined it with my SoAn (Sociology and Anthropology) minor and studied long-distance running culture in Norway.”
For four weeks, Metcalf-Lindenburger immersed herself in the Norwegian running scene. “I got to talk to all kinds of different people, I got to run around with them, did workouts with them, trained with them, and immersed myself in the culture doing ethnographic research, but I also was learning exercise science terminology and practices.”
As Metcalf-Lindenburger met with different run clubs, athletes, and locals, she chronicled her daily experience and wrote a 16-page ethnographic research paper. Metcalf-Lindenburger’s research focused on the motivations behind runners’ training and included a cross-cultural analysis comparing America’s running culture to Norway’s.
“Everything in the U.S. is like you’re running Division I, Division II, there’s a lot of pressure for scholarships, and in Norway it’s all club-based, so there’s a lot more intrinsic motivation than extrinsic motivation being put on you.”
Metcalf-Lindenburger, along with presenting her work at the Summer Research Symposium, shared a more fine-tuned, edited version of her original paper with The Norwegian American, an editorial magazine. “The editor is currently looking at that, and that will get rolled out in October.”
Students who participate in the summer research program are encouraged to present the results of their work at regional or national research conferences along with the Summer Research Symposium.
Another student who applied for summer research is fellow sophomore Abdul Sultani (‘29), a SoAn major on the pre-dental track. He traveled internationally to Egypt, spending three weeks conducting research on miswak, a naturally sourced toothbrush dental technique native to the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
“I went to Cairo, and then Alexandria, and I was able to interview three dentists. I went to farms where they grow it because miswak is natural; it comes from a tree called the arab tree. This tree only grows in dry areas of the Middle East, and so I went to the farms and interviewed the farmers that grow it and people who use it daily, and I also spoke to people who sell it.”
Sultani focused his research on interacting with locals and recording his interactions through photographs. For his presentation at the Summer Research Symposium in the Wheelock Student Center, Abdul decided to highlight his photography.
Although students are at the heart of summer research, development of these projects is overseen by expert faculty advisors. Faculty advisor and Professor of Anthropology Andrew Gardner has been supporting students with their summer research projects since 2012. “Experiential learning is a newer term for something that we’ve been doing in anthropology for a long time: participating, experiencing, and learning from that experience. This program can be just the perfect fit for students with an interest in anthropology.”
Staff members also support summer research efforts. Experiential Learning Program Manager Elize Hellam is a key facet in what helps the summer research program run smoothly, and she reflected on the increasingly competitive application process. “Last year we had funded the most students we ever had; we also had more applications than we ever had, so I had to say no to more students than I ever had. I anticipate that trend to continue this year, which means this year will be even more competitive than last year.”
If students’ research proposals are not initially accepted, they are encouraged to apply the subsequent year. There is no limit to how many times undergraduates can submit proposals.
The summer research program offers students an exemplary opportunity specific to the University of Puget Sound to go in depth in their interests and further explore their major and potential career fields, even allowing them the chance to travel internationally. Applications for summer 2027 research are due in March.