Elsie Denton ’09 doing research under the direction of Professor Frank Frey, from 2009.
Sometimes good science takes time, and when it comes to student-faculty connections and research at Colgate, there are never any time-limits. In one recent case, research conducted between 2006-2008 was recently published by three alumni who stayed in touch with Frank Frey, associate professor of biology and environmental studies, long after graduation.
While at Colgate, Andrea Berardi ’08 and Jessica Wells ’08 worked for a summer in Frey’s biology lab, and Elsie Denton ’09 worked on the same project a year later.
A current PhD candidate at the University of Virginia, Berardi continued to collaborate with Frey in a bid to conclude the project and get a paper published.
Frey suggested that Berardi, Wells, and Denton collaborate on one paper about the research, which focused on a certain kind of pigment and the role it might play in plant life history.
Denton is currently a master’s student at Colorado State. Wells, who earned an MPH from Brown University, is an orthopedic surgery healthcare consultant.
“We worked on it on-and-off for a year or so, but it fell between the cracks when we all moved on to grad school and other projects,” said Berardi.
Last year, though, the trio decided that the paper had “bounced around enough,” so they finished it and sent it to the International Journal of Plant Sciences. The process involved two rounds of peer review, lasting about nine months, then another couple of months before it appeared in the most recent issue.
Colgate has always placed a strong emphasis on close faculty-student interaction, providing undergraduates with opportunities that larger schools often can’t provide. This published paper is just one example of that.
Alumni, did you stay in touch with faculty members after graduation? Use the comments section below to let us know.