Janet Hollingsworth’s Summer Scholars project melds engineering with artistry, creating something “that’s far more beautiful than just an engineered box. Photo: Andrew Hollingsworth

How I Spent My Summer Vocation

After finals last spring, life slowed down for some Tufts students, but not for the crop of undergraduates who took advantage of various Tufts-sponsored summer programs. For them there was no end of worthy pursuits—conducting research, leading community service projects, and working for nonprofit organizations near Tufts and around the world.

Jordan Maril, A08, stuck close to campus, researching sustainable agriculture through Tufts’ Summer Scholars program, which afforded 50 students an opportunity to conduct funded research under the eye of a faculty member from one of Tufts’ three campuses. Beyond campus, students participating in the Tisch Active Citizenship Summer Fellows (ACS) program, an initiative sponsored by the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, worked on more than two dozen projects in communities both local and international.

Hoang Do, A08, was among 25 students who got nonprofit work experience through Tufts’ new Career Services internship grant program, which provides stipends to those accepting unpaid summer internships. Do, a psychology major, served as a translator for the Vietnamese American Civics Association, helping immigrants settle in Boston. “It’s very satisfying to help clients just like someone once helped my family when we first came to America,” he says.

Language was a popular theme this summer. Brett Newman, A09, who will likely major in international relations and Japanese, used his ACS fellowship to work with SPELL Jr. (Summer Program for English Language Learners), a six-week program designed to improve the language skills of Somerville schoolchildren. Another ACS Fellow, Ashley Pandya, A09, spent her summer trying to explain the intricacies of the “silent e” and other pitfalls of the English language to underprivileged children in Mumbai, India.

While the children learned about English grammar, Pandya learned about the land of her parents’ birth. “In a sense, this visit was a culture shock; there was no one to buffer me from Indian life,” she recalls. “I had to figure out bus routes, and learn how to communicate, all with hand signals and a few rudimentary Hindi phrases.”

Liz Manno, A07, also taught children on her Active Citizenship Summer fellowship. Working at two closely linked organizations, the Somerville Growing Center and Groundworks Somerville, she instructed children in how to grow and cook their own food. Asked if they knew where potatoes came from, these city kids would invariably reply “Stop & Shop.”

Janet Hollingsworth, A07, E07, used her Summer Scholars grant to “bridge the world of engineering and the world of art.” Advised by Eric Hines, a lecturer in civil and environmental engineering, she designed and built a structure resembling a staircase, with one end anchored to a platform and the other end projecting seven feet into open air.

It was the integrity of university research, not that of engineered structures, that occupied Summer Scholar Brady Messmer, A07. She examined conflicts of interest at 25 research institutions, scrutinizing those that receive the most funding from private industry. She surveyed universities to determine whether they had coherent policies in place and how well those policies dealt with the declaration of financial interests, contracts between researchers and institutions, publication rights, patents, and royalties. “It’s important to maintain the public’s trust in science,” says Messmer.

Messmer’s faculty mentor, Sheldon Krimsky, couldn’t agree more. “There’s an attitude of ‘anything goes,’ ” says Krimsky, a professor of urban and environmental policy and planning, “and I think people are beginning to realize that it’s affecting the integrity of the science and the respectability of science as an institution. If you reach a point that science becomes something you can buy, people are going to be turning away from it as a source of certifiable knowledge.”

Environmental engineering in Ecuador, aid to Sri Lankans recovering from the 2004 tsunami, girls’ education in Malawi—the list of summer projects is a mile long. Even when classes end and beaches beckon, some Tufts students never slow down.