Category: Semester

Ella Sokulski, BMC 27′

Museum Studies Fieldwork: Wexler Gallery

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site: Wexler Gallery

Field Supervisor: Maeve Daly

Praxis Poster:

HART_EllaSokulski_Revised

 

Further Context:

Over the course of the spring semester, I had the pleasure of interning at Wexler Gallery, an art gallery in Philadelphia’s Fishtown. Wexler Gallery focuses on exhibiting collectible design and artwork; these categories span fine arts, such as paintings to glass, and light design. As an intern, I became aware of the daily workings of an art gallery and explored each facet of gallery life.

Through my internship, I explored numerous online platforms used by the gallery, including FileMaker Pro, ArtBase, Squarespace, 1st Dibs, Incollect, and Constant Contact. Part of my responsibilities as an intern were to make sure these online platforms were up-to-date. This included adding contacts and art to ArtBase, adding people to the mailing list, updating pieces on 1st Dibs and Incollect to be sold, updating information on the website, and contacting museums and designers to promote our artists.

Along with the digital aspect of my internship, I was also a part of putting together the Henry Bermudez exhibition. I accompanied Maeve, my field supervisor, to Bermudez’s studio to take photos and dimensions of his art for the show, and organized them online so that they were easy to reference. I was able to help with the curatorial process and assisted in the arrangement of the art. Along with the technical side of the exhibition, I also helped with facilitating the opening.

Interning at Wexler Galler was an amazing experience where I got to experience the daily activities of an art gallery. I gained valuable skills for online databases and for working with other websites, such as Incollect. The staff at Wexler Gallery was extremely welcoming and eager to help me figure things out, I am so thankful for all that I learned.

Deora Starobin, BMC 26′

Exhibition Labeling at Woodmere Art Museum

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site: Woodmere Art Museum

Field Supervisor: Amy Gillette

Praxis Poster:

HART_DeoraStarobin_Revised

 

Further Context:

This semester I worked at the Woodmere Art Museum, located in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. This is a smaller scale institution that focuses on the artworks and artists of the greater Philadelphia region and their social ideas in the broader context of American art. They have a phenomenal collection of works inside their 19th-century building, as well as an array of outdoor sculpture installations. I had the incredible opportunity to work in the curatorial department under their Associate Curator, Amy Gillette.

In collaboration with two other interns from Bryn Mawr, I got to help Amy organize the artworks Woodmere was planning on exhibiting in their new building opening this fall, Maguire Hall. This project became something that I was able to work on in a hybrid format—Doing most work independently, while coming to Woodmere bi-weekly to check in on my progress and to get to know the museum a bit better. I started by sorting through a long document of all the works that would be displayed in the new building and figuring out which ones already have object labels and artist biographies. I was also responsible for cross-referencing the museum’s information with what is currently on their collections website. Many of these works already had labels and biographies online, though some had never been written about before. I found this part of the project to be repetitive and task-oriented, and thus it felt rewarding when the long document had finally been fully sorted through.

The next part of the project involved going through the pre-existing labels and biographies and creating revisions. Some of the artists are still living, so it was important to make sure their information was up to date. Some of the object labels were a bit short or lacked detail, so I did my best to create more nuanced formal descriptions and include some art historical analysis. I tried my hand at writing a couple artist biographies from my own research, which I found came much easier to me than the object labels. I also found supplemental readings for the labels, so readers could learn more about certain art movements or artists that were relevant to the piece.

Although this process was difficult at first, I really enjoyed doing this independent work. I feel as though my research and writing skills have improved substantially, and I think it will be neat to see what I worked on when I visit the new building in the fall. Additionally, I am so grateful to Amy, my supervisor, for introducing me to her colleagues and letting me sit in on various departmental meetings at the museum. I found this to be an incredibly fulfilling firsthand experience to the behind-the-scenes world of a local art museum.

Eleanor Toyama, BMC 26′

Penn Museum: Into the Collections

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site: The Penn Museum

Field Supervisor: The Penn Museum

Praxis Poster:

HART_EleanorToyama_REVISED

 

Further Context:

For my Museum Studies Fieldwork experience, I got the opportunity to work with Katy Blanchard, a Bryn Mawr alum, in the Near East collections of the Penn Museum. I worked alongside another Bryn Mawr intern, Sally Jamrog, in completing the photographic inventory of material excavated from the site of Beth Shemesh on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The site was occupied from about 2000 BCE by the Canaanites, and is mentioned in the Old Testament as an important biblical city. This means we were working with objects over 4000 years old, such as ceramic lamps, dishes, jugs, stoneware, and even some semiprecious stones used as jewelry. Being in contact with these objects twice a week for so many hours at a time was an incredible opportunity, and drew me even closer to the ancient world.

Sally and I proceeded methodically through shelves of objects, checking that each item was in its place, and then bringing them to the next stage. We photographed the objects against a gray backdrop and made decisions about how to best position each piece to highlight the most diagnostic elements. We then put the items in new containers, either plastic bags or boxes, writing the identifying museum numbers in fresh Sharpie. After that, the objects got placed back on the shelves, and we organized them in the most efficient way to maximize visibility and ease of access. This was the flow of most of our work days—some other times, we went on visits upstairs (out of the collections basement!) to the galleries, to look at item examples, or to archives, to check out the field notes of the items we were handling.

Throughout this experience, I’ve gotten a very hands-on perspective of the everyday work that goes into managing the collections at a museum, and specifically an archaeological one. This is especially pertinent as I am a Classics major, so I am glad that I was able to bring that viewpoint to work that deals with the kind of things that I am studying directly in my other courses. I’ve gained a new appreciation for the little objects, with lots of credit to my supervisor Katy’s enthusiasm and pure love for her job and all it entails. I went into this course with the hope of learning a bit more about the behind-the-scenes of a museum, and I am emerging with the knowledge that collections management is a fulfilling experience that presents new discoveries every day.

Anth 246 Spring 2024: Field Research in Linguistic Anthropology

Praxis I Course: Anth 246 Spring 2024: Field Research in Linguistic Anthropology

Instructor: Amanda Weidman

Community Partner: Science Leadership Academy (SLA) at Beeber

Explore Professor Amanda Weidman’s scholarship, student-led research, and methodology for ethnographic analysis here: https://brynmawranthro.wixsite.com/linguisticanthro/courses-at-bryn-mawr

Course Description:

This course provides hands-on experience in linguistic anthropological methods of data collection and analysis. We will explore various methods employed by linguistic anthropologists, including: ethnographic observation of language use in context; audio-recording of spoken discourse; working with a linguistic corpus; online research methods; conducting linguistic and ethnographic interviews; and learning how to create a transcript to use as the basis for ethnographic analysis. This is a Praxis 1 course. For the praxis component of the course, in the first half of the semester, the class will work with a high school language arts teacher to design a lesson and project for a high school language arts class that incorporates linguistic-anthropological concepts and student-driven research on language. The purpose of this is to move beyond the prescriptivist approach to language commonly taken at the high school level, toward a more descriptive, ethnographic approach that learns from young people’s creativity and agency as speakers of language. In the second half of the semester, the class will work collaboratively on a research project that we develop as a class. Class time will be used to discuss the results of student work, read and discuss relevant literature in linguistic anthropology, synthesize insights that develop from bringing different ethnographic contexts together; and work collaboratively on a way of presenting the findings.

Lucy Cambefort (BMC 25′), Angie Quiroz (BMC 26′), Fiona Shen (BMC 27′)

Data Visualization for Reservoir Concentration

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: DSCI 310: Data in Action

Faculty Advisor: Jennifer Spohrer

Field Site: Discovery Center

Field Supervisor: Bria Wimberly

Praxis Poster: 

DSCI_WaterProject_Revised_PraxisPoster-compressed

 

Further Context:

This semester, our team collaborated with The Discovery Center to create a visualization model demonstrating the evolution of abiotic factors over time, using data collected from Lake Vickers on the Bryn Mawr campus, provided by Professor Tom Mozdzer. The reservoir at The Discovery Center spans 38 acres and is just under 8 feet deep. Structurally, it resembles a bathtub, with steep walls leading down to a flat bottom composed of concrete and brick. Originally, water was pumped in from the Schuylkill River, but it is now primarily replenished through precipitation. It is currently the largest body of freshwater in Philadelphia.

By collecting and publishing data on the water chemistry of the reservoir, the community can learn more about the biodiversity and in turn improve the environmental conditions of the center. This will also make Professor Mozdzer’s data available for the college to further research on the sustainability of the campus. To make this work, we reproduced the graphs from Zentra Cloud in R, and created a StoryMap using KnightLab to make the data accessible and informational to the public.

We were able to use the data continuously uploaded in real time to the ZentraCloud platform through the sensors installed in Lake Vickers by Tom Mozdzer. Months worth of information on the environment and chemistry of the water stored on Zentra proved to be an invaluable source we could work with to create our model. However, Zentra is only accessible through obtaining the credentials of an account, which is expensive and in turn creates difficulties for allowing more people to use the data.

We took on the added challenge of recreating a graph from Zentra using R Studio, which is public and free, that would serve as a model for making this data accessible to Bryn Mawr. This would also allow for the data to be used in other classes and further the research started by Professor Mozdzer. We were able to write out the code for plotting graphs using csv files, which would be the outline for the Discovery Center to use once they collect their own data from the reservoir using sensors they intend on installing. This process pushed our coding skills and our ability to make use of the resources provided by the college, such as the office hours held by the Digital Humanities department.

In order to display the graphs created with R Studio, we searched for a platform that allowed The Discovery Center to present monthly water chemistry data from different locations in the reservoir and ultimately embed it onto their website. We found StoryMap, a user-friendly tool from KnightLab that allows users to add descriptions and graphs to various locations using coordinates which are important to graph points in the reservoir. This would be a great way to incorporate advanced graphs using R to customize visualizations. While StoryMap focuses on spatial data, StoryLine is another tool used to display information uploaded from spreadsheets to create interactive graphs. This tool also has the option of including descriptions for specific data points, allowing the public to understand changes in levels of dissolved oxygen, pH and temperatures over time, as well as other chemistry data.

Our next steps for the Discovery Center is to present the code we have been working on and our data visualizations to the staff in a virtual presentation in May. We hope for them to use our visualization model as an example and apply it to their own water data. In the long road, they would produce code that updates their visualizations regularly with real time data and embed the StoryMap onto their website. This would allow for communities and the public to view their water data and gain insights on water chemistry like temperature, DO, pH, etc at the center, while also including biotic factors as well like aquatic insects. This will help their goals in measuring how those populations vary over time in different locations, seeing what is affecting them.

Salem Boyer (BMC ’28), Makayla Coleman (HAV ’26) , and Jess Smith (BMC ’25)

Internal Process: Neighbors Helping Neighbors on the Main Line

Course Instructor: Darlyne Bailey

Field Site: Neighbors Helping Neighbors

Field Supervisor: Muneera Walker & Rachael Omansky Chou

Praxis Poster:

ARJ_Internal Process_Combined

 

Further Context:

This semester, we had the opportunity to volunteer at Neighbors Helping Neighbors on the Main Line (NHN) as the Internal Process team. NHN is a non-profit organization that supports underrepresented youth and communities in the greater Philadelphia area.

NHN has many different programs; however, we focused on the Education Empowerment program, which offers free in-person after-school homework help, one-on-one tutoring through a hybrid platform, and year-round youth mentoring. As the Internal process team, we aimed to review the structure of NHN to find strengths and weaknesses while also growing the program organically to include new features. Specifically, we focused on cursive writing, promotion, family engagement, large group reading, and cataloguing.

Our first project was catalogs. The catalogs consisted of documenting and digitalizing the book and games offered at NHN on the Main Line. This process was tedious. After taking pictures of everything, we put them onto a google doc. Then, we made them into catalogs to highlight the expansive library with many popular books and detail the skills learned by the games. This project was just an inventory project. It revealed a need for books for kids above the age of 12 at NHN.

Our second project was CursiveLogic. CursiveLogic as offered by our Praxis supervisor, Muneera, is a cursive writing program that tries to use colors, shapes, and catchphrases as a way of trying to make learning cursive more comprehensive and more accessible. We first began by researching the history of cursive writing to which we created a timeline that goes from the 1500s to the present day. Alongside the timeline, we offer a brochure that includes the research done about the benefits of cursive and our investigation of CursiveLogic. The last part of the brochure includes the way that CursiveLogic can be implemented at NHN.

Our final project involved adding family engagement events. We developed a series of family-oriented programs and organized them in a detailed spreadsheet. We planned five events to take place throughout the year, with the ultimate goal of increasing parent involvement and fostering a sense of community among families. The programs include Open House/Back to NHN Night, Reading Workshop, Career Day, Community Cookout, and a Gardening Workshop. We first created an event planner spreadsheet that can be used as a template for organizing any future events at NHN. We filled the planner out for each of the five events to provide a complete event description, logistics, objectives, and to-do tasks. We also included a post-event evaluation section that can be used to track the reach and impact of each event to analyze how they can expand over time. Lastly, we created mock flyers for each event, which can be edited and used for NHN promotional use. We wanted to provide both the spreadsheets and flyers to give a clear picture of what we imagine the events to be and make the implementation process seamless.

I, Makayla, really thought I knew about racial justice, but I was wrong. I thought I knew what most NGOs behaved like, but I was wrong. I had an amazing experience with NHN and the overall community that upholds the shared commitment of the four pathways: radical love, cultural humility, forgiveness, and compassion. This experience has forever changed my perspective on ongoing racial issues within the environmental justice movement. I believe that if we can heal people, then the next step is to heal the world.

I, Jess, really enjoyed my time at NHN and am very grateful for the growth opportunities and insights into what racial justice can look like. I learned how much of a difference community-based education can make as a supplement to traditional schooling and how it is in many cases a more effective environment for teaching because of the extra intentionality behind the methods of youth mentoring. I also observed how process improvement efforts can happen organically and not always need a systematic approach. The mission of Neighbors Helping Neighbors inspired me to pursue a role in process improvement, as this experience gave me insight into how that can be achieved naturally within a community-based organization.

I, Salem, am very appreciative of the opportunity to work with NHN. Having been involved with similar yet less successful educational organizations in the past, it was really enlightening to observe how NHN is actually enacting racial justice. I think it boils down to immense care and patience at every structural level. I learned about applying academic concepts and research to real life contexts, which, being community-based, differ from traditional settings. I feel emboldened in my ability to contribute to the communities in my life, on both an organizational and personal level.

Hana Sandomirsky (BMC ’26), Peyton Roberson (BMC ’26), and Diane Gentry

Creative Data: Exploring intersections of Data and Community with Neighbors Helping Neighbors on the Main Line

Semester: Fall 2024

Course Instructor: Darlyne Bailey

Field Site: Neighbors Helping Neighbors

Field Supervisor: Muneera Walker & Rachael Omansky Chou

Praxis Poster:

ARJ_Creative Data_Combined_Reduced

 

Further Context:

Neighbors Helping Neighbors (NHN) on the Main Line is a grassroots organization supporting underrepresented communities and youth in the Greater Philadelphia region. One of the three cornerstone initiatives of NHN programming is their Education Empowerment work. During the school year an important part of this work takes place during their Homework Club which provides Free in-person after-school homework help and healthy snacks, Monday through Thursday. Tutors include retired teachers and students from Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges. Our praxis project focused on collecting and analyzing data to both qualitatively and quantitatively measure the success of the NHN Homework Club program. We aimed to understand and illustrate how NHN’s efforts effectively support their participants’ academic success, using both qualitative insights and quantitative metrics.

We had to redefine the project several times as we had to be particularly careful about the data we were collecting since the work we were doing was with children; permission forms and ethics, and protecting privacy were especially important. Defining those rules and making sure we understood those parameters took some exploration and help from our mentors.

Next, understanding how to best frame our survey questions to present information in a format that the children would connect to was challenging. After two days of implementing paper surveys with lukewarm reception, we were inspired by a class reading to pursue a community data collection method called photovoice. Making data collection FUN drastically changed the levels of excitement in participating – no participant opted out, and several tried very hard to convince us to take the survey twice so they could take additional photos.

Finally, data sorting, labeling, and interpretation are the biggest remaining chunks of work that our team is left with, and in retrospect, we think collecting the data should have been half the project and an entire separate semester could have been dedicated to sorting and interpreting the data.

Our Creative Data team is left still wanting to better understand how to represent and communicate the data we have collected to clearly define next steps, maybe not for our project, but to leave the work we have done in a better place for another project to be able to use the photos and paper surveys as a foundation for their own photovoice work with NHN. One semester was just too short a timeline to accomplish a project of this scope. Our group’s final step will be the sorting and labelling all of the images that we collected with their corresponding descriptions collected verbally from the children as the photos were taken. Following this, we hope the photos could be used as tools in a series of discussions at NHN to find themes and meanings, perhaps using the 10S Framework, and drawing inspiration from the Photovoice project and the teachings of Paulo Freire.

Nada Elshafey, BMC ’26

Visualizing the Germantown YWCA

Semester: Fall 2024

Faculty Advisor: Min Kyung Lee

Field Site: Friends for the Restoration of the Germantown YWCA

Field Supervisor: Ann Doley

Praxis Poster: 

Elshafey_Final poster_resized

 

Further Context:

“Visualizing the Germantown YWCA” is an independent study that builds on my work as a Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow, where I collaborated with a team to create a website preserving the history of the Germantown YWCA. My role focused on the building page, where I developed an interactive floor plan map that allowed users to explore the building
through clickable rooms, revealing their functions and history. However, the lack of architectural documentation limited what I could achieve in representing the building. Recognizing the potential for further research, our project director, Professor Min Kyung Lee, suggested continuing the project as a Praxis independent study.

The study has three main phases: collecting archival materials, improving the floor plan map, and creating a new architectural visualization based on my findings. Research formed the foundation of my work but proved to be a far more iterative and ongoing process than I anticipated. My first task was exploring Temple’s Special Collections, marking my first experience as a researcher in an archive. I spent four hours examining historical materials,
discovering floor plans and reconstruction blueprints. While many lacked sufficient detail, they were valuable as the only resources available at the time.

Archival research required adaptability and persistence. I often didn’t know what I would find and had to remain open to new directions. This study also highlighted the importance of connecting with professionals and seeking guidance. My field supervisor, Ann Doley, continuously helped me understand what the Germantown community needed our preservation work to be like. She also connected me with community members who shared memories that answered some of my questions and provided photos revealing more of the building’s interior than what is available online. Librarian Molly Ward at the Joseph E.

Coleman Library was also instrumental in pointing me to critical resources, including The First 100 Years of the Germantown YWCA book. She also helped me locate the building on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, which revealed that the Athenaeum of Philadelphia held 12 blueprints. Visiting the Athenaeum was a turning point. There, I found the detailed, scaled plans, sections, and elevations I had sought since the beginning. These documents are the closest we have to being inside the building which makes them the foundation for creating new visualizations, ensuring the building’s architecture and history are accurate, preserved, and accessible.

What surprised me most was how research is never truly “finished.” Each step led to another, requiring constant reassessment of my goals. This iterative process extended the research phase far beyond my initial timeline but also deepened my understanding of the building and its context. The journey of discovery—layering findings, refining representations, and adapting my approach—became integral to the project itself.

Melanie Golden, BMC ’25

Climate Science and Communication

Semester: Fall 2024

Faculty Advisor: Don Barber

Field Site: The Discovery Center

Field Supervisor: Bria Wimberly

Praxis Poster: 

Melanie Golden Praxis Poster_Final

 

Further Context:

Ever since I participated in Bryn Mawr’s 360 course cluster on “Climate Change: Science and Politics”, I have been intrigued by environmentalism and its specific manifestations in the Philadelphia area. Luckily, I was able to pursue this goal by participating in a Praxis independent study at The Discovery Center of Philadelphia (TDC), which has been providing a sanctuary for Philadelphians for over 6 years. Through this Praxis I was able to practice climate communication, research previous reports, learn about the local community, and employ my academic knowledge. I accomplished many of these goals through the numerous projects I took on with my field supervisor, Bria, and my fellow Praxis student, Emily. We helped host TDC’s first Environmental Justice Resource Fair, spoke with students at the Community College of Philadelphia (CCP), facilitated middle school field trips, and created a resource focused on Indigenous history. All of these projects prioritized the interests of the Strawberry Mansion community.

During one of my first in-office days at TDC, Emily and I spoke with one of the center assistants, a woman born and raised in Strawberry Mansion. From a first-hand perspective, I learned about how the neighborhood has changed as well as the present-day environmental issues. I also learned about the area from various readings and a study done by Philadelphia’s Office of Sustainability. Between the written work and conversations, I gained a multi-faceted understanding of the neighborhood. Overall, the area is rich with community but is harmed by gentrification, inadequate trash pickup, and high rates of asthma. Eventually, these issues became the basis for our Environmental Justice Resource Fair.

The Environmental Justice Resource Fair was the first of its kind at TDC and aimed to connect community members with environmentally focused organizations. This included the Strawberry Mansion Neighborhood Action Center (NAC), the Clean Air Council, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Brewerytown Garden, and more. We contacted these organizations through The Discovery Center’s existing contacts as well as cold-calling and emailing.

The event took place at The Discovery Center’s space and utilized the Civic Engagement Mini-Grant from the Career & Civic Engagement Center. The grant money provided the capital to provide snacks and small giveaways to encourage attendance as well as the money for a speaker from the Strawberry Mansion NAC. We also provided a handful of environmentally focused crafts for children who came. Overall, we had a decent turnout and provided a great space for organizations and community members to come together and learn from each other.

Hosting this event provided the space to practice climate communication as well as re-affirming the difficulties of event planning. Although the Environmental Justice Resource Fair was the largest project I undertook at The Discovery Center, the other smaller projects provided excellent learning opportunities as well. I practiced science communication through helping facilitate middle-school field trips and speaking at a class at the Community College of Philadelphia. These events covered a variety of different ages and varying prior knowledge regarding environmental issues. The Discovery Center’s relationships with nearby schools and other community spaces facilitated these opportunities. These interactions emphasized the importance of environmental education and the fostering of relationships with nature and space.

Overall, I learned quite a bit about the nonprofit world and the importance of community engagement and support. The Discovery Center provides a valuable space for community members to gather and connect with nature. Their mission of engaging and serving the local community is admirable and evident in their actions. Their work has renewed my interest in the environmental world and shown how my academic skills can contribute to the professional world. Ultimately, I look forward to following what The Discovery Center does in later years and seeing how they develop the Environmental Justice Resource Fair.