Category: Spring Semester 2025

Olivia Herman, BMC 26′

Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site: Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History

Field Supervisor: Claire Pingel

Praxis Poster:

HART_OliviaHerman_REVISED

 

Further Context:

For my museum studies praxis, I worked at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History which is located in Independence Mall in downtown Philadelphia. The museum celebrates the history of Jews in America dating back to the 17th century. The museum’s goal is to provide a place where American Jews and people of all backgrounds can learn about the diversity of the American Jewish experience and Jews’s role in American history. The museum has three main exhibition floors each focusing on a different chunk of time: 1654-1880, 1880-1945, and 1945- today (or 2006), and one more floor with a focus on prominent Jews in American history.  

I worked specifically in the collections and registration department where I completed a variety of different tasks. I learned how and did exhibit walkthroughs, where I made sure everything in the exhibit was clean, where it was supposed to be, and that all the humidity and temperature-controlled cases were at the correct level. I also did a lot of work for their special exhibition “The First Salute” which is opening in April of next year for the 250th anniversary of America. I helped out with artifact research, finding loan information, organization of potential artifacts, and adding loans to the museum’s online database. I also helped out with the museum’s collaboration with a local high school which are doing a small temporary exhibit at the museum as well as an online exhibit. I’ve also helped with processing loan returns and final condition checks. I’ve conducted research also on a potential future exhibit based on something in the museum’s collection.  

During my time at the Weitzman, I have learned also about the behind the scenes of a museum and all that goes into museum work. I’ve gained a variety of new skills such as working with a museum database and gaining proficiency with Excel. I also understand more about how museum loans work and how much planning needs to go into them months before an exhibit will open. I also better understand the process behind creating a new exhibit and how many people both internal and external are involved as well as what each role in the process entails. 

Delaney Kenney, HC 25′

The Franklin Institute: Youth Programs

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site: The Franklin Institute

Field Supervisor: Carly Netting

Praxis Poster:

HART_DELANEYKENNEY_REVISED

 

Further Context:

This spring, I had the pleasure of working at The Franklin Institute (TFI), Philadelphia’s science and technology museum. TFI was founded in 1824 by Samuel Vaughan Merrick and William H. Keating in order to promote the love of science and technology through experiential, hands-on learning. During my time, I worked primarily with the Youth Programs team, but I also had the amazing opportunity to speak with a wide range of TFI professionals. I learned more about how science museums function as a collaborative space dedicated to inspiring the scientist in us all. 

The Franklin Institute has three main youth programs that I engaged with: PACTS (Partnership for Achieving Careers in Technology and Science), STEM Scholars, and Franklin Ambassadors. PACTS is a program that serves 60 middle school students by organizing biweekly scientific workshops. I assisted with the Science Investigators sector of this program in which the students get to learn about different areas of science in every workshop. The coolest workshop I assisted with was helping students to build a robotic arm!  

STEM Scholars serves high school students in weekly workshops conducted by partner organizations, such as the University of Pennsylvania and Saint Joseph’s University. Students are split by grade and each grade comes into the Museum once a week for their designated workshop. I engaged with the sophomore class and got the opportunity to both mentor students and assist professional researchers with the implementation of their programming. My favorite workshop was measuring the neuronal response of venus fly traps!  

I spent the majority of my time with the Franklin Ambassadors. The Ambassadors are a high school leadership cohort who do everything from mentoring younger students to being extra hands for museum events to attending weekly career and college readiness seminars. I loved getting to forge close relationships with a number of Ambassadors and see them grow throughout the semester both personally as well as in their leadership roles! My main projects with the Ambassadors were to create a seminar for their weekly series and to organize a laboratory field trip for them. My seminar was part of their career and college readiness series and focused on tips and tricks for resume-building. The lab visit I arranged was to my own thesis laboratory at Bryn Mawr! I brought the Ambassadors into my lab and exposed them to both electroencephalography (EEG) technology and virtual reality. I ran them as mock-participants for my thesis study, which revolves around investigating the neural correlates of deception utilizing virtual reality, and also taught them how to be study administrators themselves. It was such a fun experience to see them become neuroscience researchers for the day!  

My main project as an intern was to develop an original community outreach project. I was given the task of designing a set of activities related to a scientific topic of my choice that had to engage all ages for anywhere from 15 seconds to 15 minutes. I chose to create a project based around the neuroscience behind illusions, to function as an extension of TFI’s optical illusions exhibit. I collaborated with both the Design and Curriculum Development teams to produce a set of 8 activities with corresponding scientific explanation cards. It was such an interesting experience to see the process through which multiple different departments work together to create a project. I presented my activities alongside Ambassadors at Smith Playground’s Play-a-Palooza, and it was such a rewarding experience to see community members enjoy them so much! My project will serve as TFI’s outreach program for the next year.  

Reflecting on my time at TFI, I learned so much about how science museums function as well as the ways in which museums leverage their resources to best serve their communities. This experience has greatly prepared me for my post-graduation position as a social impact fellow at the Museum of Science in Boston. I am so grateful for my mentors as well as my students for welcoming me into TFI and helping me develop my skills as a science museum educator! 

Carey Klopfenstein, BMC ’26

Work with the P.A. Browne Collection at The Academy of Natural Sciences

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

Field Supervisor: Jessica Lydon

Praxis Poster:

HART_Carey_Klopfenstein_Final

 

Further Context:

My dad snatched away the lollipop two-year-old me was licking gleefully when he realized it contained a scorpion at its center. He’d bought me the lollipop at the gift shop on the way out of one of our many visits to the Academy of Natural Science during my childhood. My earliest memories of learning to love museums take place at the Academy, like learning about Prehistory and doing mock Paleontological digs.  

I never expected I would be returning to the Academy as an intern after all these years. In high school, I became passionate about social justice issues related to museums, in particular the repatriation of the remains of Indigenous Peoples and the representation of Indigenous peoples in museums. I chose Bryn Mawr College in part because of its Museum Studies program, and I declared an Anthropology major to fit with my career goal of working in a museum. Because of my childhood experience, I associated the Academy with dinosaurs and bugs rather than Anthropology. When Tiffany Stahl, the associate director for Praxis, suggested that I look into interning at the Academy for my Praxis internship, I didn’t expect to find any positions related to the treatment of Indigenous Peoples in museums. 

To my surprise, the Academy had the perfect position for me. Despite no longer having any exhibits related to Anthropology, the Academy still has a collection from the nineteenth century that contains specimens of human hair collected by the scientist Peter Arrell Browne. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had requested a list of the groups of people whose hair was included in Browne’s collection to whom the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) apply. I compiled a list of all the terms that Browne used for Indigenous peoples in the United States. I also researched the terms that Browne used to find out what terms the descendants of the people whom these specimens were taken from prefer to be referred to in the modern day.  

From this updated information, I created a data dictionary for the Academy. At the BIA’s request, I also calculated the number of hair samples and people that corresponded with each legacy term. I identified the date when each specimen was collected, as well as the contact information for the relevant federally recognized tribes and entities for each specimen, to enable the Academy to contact the descendants of the people the samples were taken from. 

I also did research in the Academy’s archives to collect information about the life of Peter Arrell Browne, and also to find further information for other projects I have been working on. Peter Arrell Browne was a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences. He was a geologist who also studied animal and human hair. He was deeply racist, and he used his studies of human hair to support his argument that humans fall into three separate species. While views like this are frequently excused as products of their time, I’d like to note that this view was not universal in Browne’s day, and many of the academics that Browne argued against did not share it. Browne also worked with other prominent scientific racists of the time, such as Samuel G. Morton. Browne’s correspondence also revealed racism and cruelty on a personal level. 

I found my experience interning at the Academy to be extremely valuable.  It gave me crucial additional experience with archival research. I also found it fulfilling to be doing work that makes a positive change in an area I care deeply about. My motivation for working in museums in my career is to try to remedy the racial injustices that museums have perpetuated.I’m grateful for the opportunity to have learned through my experience and, through one small step in what will be a long process, make a positive impact.

Pascale Lowell, BMC 26′

Museum Studies Fieldwork: 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_PascaleLowell_Revised

 

Further Context:

I’ve had such an incredible experience at the Woodmere Art Museum this semester. During my time at Bryn Mawr, I’ve really come to love Philadelphia, and as a center for display of local Philadelphia artists I learned so much about the scene during my time working with Woodmere. I was supervised by their curator, Amy Gillette, with two other students from Bryn Mawr. Woodmere is opening a new building in October of 2025 (Maguire Hall), and as such needed to catalogue the labels that were usable, and where pieces would need more information. I spent the first month or two going through the catalogue and marking off what was complete and what was not. I enjoyed the low-pressure achievement aspect of this, where accomplishments were being made without my having to take very many risks or challenge myself, which was a comfortable place to start, and helped me to get familiar with the format and expectations for museum labels. I did struggle, however, with the repetitive nature of the task, and by the time we finished I was certainly ready to work on something new. 

From there I moved on to writing. My first project was a biography, which intimidated me less than the labels. For that, what was required was to find out the facts about the artist available online. To provide art interpretation seemed much easier to mess up. I was concerned by the fact that a label possesses a kind of appeal to authority and therefore could be taken by the public as the ‘be all end all’ of analyzing a specific piece. To avoid worrying about this for a bit I started with a bio instead. What I had hoped would be a simpler task turned out to be much more difficult, as I was faced with the need to cram the entirety of a person’s life into only one or two short paragraphs. I completed it, relying heavily on the artist’s own biography found on their website. From there I wanted to try something new, so I delved into label writing. 

Woodmere holds quite the collection of works from talented muralist Violet Oakley, whose pieces I had really loved viewing when I visited Woodmere. I opted to start with her works, not only because I enjoyed her style but because I identified with her. She was a Bryn Mawr graduate, and very likely a queer woman who spent her life living with Edith Emerson, an artist who dedicated her life after Oakley’s death to preserving her memory. She served as Woodmere’s director, contributing greatly to their extensive collection of both her and Oakley’s works, spurring the museum to focus not only on Philadelphia artists but women as well. Part of what is going to be displayed in the new building are several drafts created by Oakley for a boy’s school of various religious scenes. I loved the colors of her study for Young David in his fight against goliath and found it much simpler to provide interpretation when I could compare between the study and the final mural. As my first attempt I struggled to condense what I wanted to accomplish into something as short as it needed to be. I continued on from there with several more of Oakley’s studies, which served as such a great introduction to label writing. 

When I moved on from that group my largest problem became decision paralysis. I spent way too much of my time scrolling through the endless document attempting to select pieces to write about I felt confident enough in, with enough material on the internet that I could base my interpretation on something solid. I completed a few labels this way but struggled with how long each one took me. In a meeting with the publicity team Amy mentioned offhandedly that “labels aren’t kidneys” which I tried to keep in mind when writing from that point on. I got less precious about my interpretation and tried to have faith that art was powerful enough to convey what it needed to. My labels served as a guide, but I also needed to trust the visitor to know that art is so deeply subjective. 

With this in mind I began to be drawn to the more abstract pieces of the collection. I loved learning about how interconnected the art scene in Philadelphia was and is, especially in the abstract art movement. So many of Woodmere’s artists learned from Arthur B. Carles, a talented portraitist who turned towards abstraction as he moved through his career. It was fascinating to look at all these pieces made by a host of different artists, each so wildly different but all citing Carles as an incredible teacher of theirs. His focus on color as a basis for composition serves as such a strong foundation for abstract art, and I loved being able to look at so many pieces through that lens.  

I’m so grateful to have gotten to learn so much at Woodmere this semester. Amy worked so hard to make sure we all got the most out of the experience, arranging meetings with different teams to talk about varying career paths, and meeting with us in person frequently. I plan to continue working with them on labels this summer, and I’m so glad to get to keep interacting with such amazing art. My writing skills have developed, and I’m proud of my ability to say what I want efficiently. It’s also been such an incredible experience as a fine arts major, as nothing is better for making art than looking at lots and lots and lots of art. I’ve gained so much knowledge about art structures and gotten to hear about the lives of so many artists, each with their own paths. As someone who found their way to making art towards the end of high school it was so comforting to see how many talented people found a love for creating late in life. Thank you so much to Bryn Mawr and to Woodmere for an absolutely amazing semester! 

Emily Chau, BMC ’26

Autism, Language, and Construction of Gender

Semester: Spring 2025

Faculty Advisor: Dustin Albert

Field Site: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP)’s Center for Autism Research (CAR)

Field Supervisor: Meg Lyons

Praxis Poster: 

PIS_Emily_Chau_PraxisPoster

 

Further Context: 

In my opinion, the creation of this independent study course was a little unorthodox. Last summer, I did a social work-related internship to explore a social work career path with the help of the Career and Civic Engagement Center’s Beyond Bryn Mawr summer internship program. However, in the Fall 2024 semester I took multiple classes that made me realize that, even though I intend to pursue social work, I deeply enjoyed learning about the behind-the-scenes research work, learning about data science, and exploring different study designs. I wanted to contribute my personal experience of having a sibling with autism, with my research interests in gender diversity, and the data science skills I learned in class into a summer internship. I saw that another student who was part of the Beyond Bryn Mawr program worked at CAR over the summer. Because I am from the area and knew about CHOP’s autism resources through my sibling, I was thrilled to apply. Based on my experience with my last internship, I wanted a more in-depth and longer internship to make deeper connections academically and socially, so I expanded my internship from just a summer internship to a spring and summer internship, leading me to create a Praxis Independent Study course. This way, I could be supported by my internship supervisor as well as a faculty member from the college when exploring my research and career interests.

During this internship, I transcribed audio samples for three studies. The first study examines similarities and differences between the way children and adolescents with autism speak and the way their peers without autism speak. The second study investigates behavioral sex differences in those with and without autism while tracking the gender development of those with gender diverse identities. The third study examines the impact of a social skills workshop intervention on adolescents with autism. Throughout the internship, I was able to observe in-person visits where I watched participants get interviewed, assessed for a potential autism diagnosis, and complete other research tasks. These observations were supported by informational materials and meetings with members of the lab. Furthermore, I worked on a literature review with my faculty advisor about the link between autism and gender diversity which helped contextualize and explain the practices and rationale employed at the lab.

One small aspect of this internship I enjoyed was learning the different quirks of the transcription software. For example, BMC is an acronym, but it must be transcribed as ~BMC since each letter is pronounced. However, an acronym like CHOP would be transcribed as @CHOP to denote that the acronym is pronounced like a word rather than separate letters. It was like learning a new language!

Overall, I am grateful to have worked at CAR during my spring semester, and I am excited about the new opportunities that will emerge when I return for the summer.  Given the current political climate and rhetoric around gender and disability, I am especially motivated to continue this work and serve this population both through this internship and through the other opportunities that this internship may open for me as I enter the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research next semester.

Miles Colescott, HC ’25

Architecture in the Real World

Semester: Spring 2025

Faculty Advisor: Jeff Cohen

Field Site: AOS Architects

Field Supervisor:  Sam Olshin

Praxis Poster: 

PIS_Miles Colescott Revised Praxis Poster

 

Further Context:

After taking the first semester of the architecture studio course that is offered by the Growth and Structure of Cities major, City 226, in the fall of my junior year, I knew architecture was what I wanted to do as a career. From then on, it became all about trying to find as much time in an architecture studio as I could. Over the winter, I applied for jobs at home in Missoula, Montana, going from office to office and pitching myself to them and why they should hire me. Ultimately, these pitches were mostly misses, but one firm seemed promising, especially after talking in depth about going to school in Pennsylvania with the receptionist, who had gone to Villanova. What ultimately seemed like a far off, unlikely outcome was seeming more promising, and after two interviews, I thought I had it. But as the months passed, and contact became less frequent, so I started to look for other options. This search ultimately led to an internship with Daniela Voith, and VMA in Philadelphia for the summer. This opened the doors for me and showed me what it was like to work in an architecture office, and ever since, I have been trying to get more time in an office, working on real world projects besides the other architects. This desire led to me discovering the Praxis program, and ultimately landing a Praxis independent study with Sam Olshin, one of the other architecture study professors, at AOS Architects.

I was able to work on a few different projects while at AOS. The first main project was for St. Marks Episcopal Church, in Jacksonville, Florida. Unlike many church communities in the United States, the congregation at St. Marks is expanding. With this growth, the existing facilities have become strained, and the worship service the church is able to provide is less effective. While AOS did a comprehensive master plan for the congregation over a decade ago, due to circumstances at the time, the church couldn’t go ahead with the plan and start construction. This time around, however, the have secured funding and will be able to start construction once we finish the design documentation. I attended zoom meetings with members of the clergy and congregation, and documented their needs that the new building must address. From there, I helped to develop these needs into a detailed program list, with quantities, square footages, and associated adjacencies for each room. This was a lot of fun, and allowed me and the other architects on the project to focus on creating multiple schemes that allowed for different things to take center focus in each one. Lastly, I helped create the floorplans for the decided upon scheme and layout each section of the building, starting by hand before moving into Revit to create a more polished set that was shared with the church. This was a challenging, but very rewarding process, to iterate on these designs and see them come to life. At the end of my time with AOS, we had created a set of finalized floor plans and were polishing up some exterior and interior perspectives that would be shown to the congregation, so they could get a better sense of what the building would look like and the materials we were going to use.

This wasn’t the only project that I got to work on, however. I spent a few weeks diving into the work of Percival Goodman, one of the most prolific designers of synagogues in the United States. For this project, I was specifically looking for synagogues that he designed, which had been recently renovated and rethought, due to falling congregation numbers. I was hoping to find precedent to aid AOS in rethinking a Goodman designed synagogue in Springfield, Massachusetts as they facing this same challenge. Ultimately, this research led me to the shocking conclusion that despite the prevalence of this problem, most congregations would rather sell their existing, frequently historic building, and build something new instead of reconfiguring their existing space. Despite this outcome, the research gave me a much deeper understanding of synagogue architecture and what it means to create a religious space that is appropriate for the congregation that it serves.

As a result of this internship, I gained a lot. First and foremost, I became more familiar with the design programs that are standard in architecture firms today. This includes design drafting software like Sketchup, AutoCAD, and Revit, and rendering programs like Enscape. Next, I gained insights into the many different stakeholders in each project, and some skills and strategies for juggling their competing interests and objectives, to ultimately create a project that all parties are happy and excited about. Lastly, I improved my spatial thinking skills by applying them to design challenges, with real world constraints. This is something that I can refine with practice, and getting to work on projects like St. Marks is the best way for me to improve. Overall, I am incredibly grateful for Sam and the rest of the team at AOS for bringing me on for this spring semester, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Thanks, guys! 🙂

Peyton Davis, BMC ’26

Drawing Boundaries: The Politics of Sovereignty in a Globalized World

Semester: Spring 2025

Faculty Advisor: Elizabeth Corredor

Field Site: New Lines Institute

Field Supervisor: Kallie Mitchell

Praxis Poster: 

PIS_REVISED_ Peyton_Davis_Praxis Poster

 

Further Context:

One of my first assignments for my Praxis course, “Drawing Boundaries: The Politics of Sovereignty in a Globalized World,” I assisted my field supervisor, Kallie Mitchell, on research for a 40-page report. She authored this report on gender-based violence in Tigray, Ethiopia in order to present to U.K. Parliament in March. I helped to find, cross-verify, and categorize facts and testimony related to these crimes. It was eye-opening and sobering to read of these experiences. I learned that, often, sovereignty of territory and sovereignty of body go hand-in-hand. Systemic gender-based violence was used as a method of “claiming” land and women.

The culminating, capstone element of my course was authoring an independent report. At first, I only had a broad idea of what I wanted to do—discuss gender dynamics in the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. Through my own research and feedback from my supervisor, I eventually decided to focus on one specific area. Rojava is a semi-autonomous region in Syria led by a predominately Kurdish government. I chose to analyze the gendered strengths of their democratic model and position it in relation to the fall of the Assad regime. The most interesting challenge in writing this was determining my audience. Unlike writing an essay for a professor, a published piece for a think tank is meant for policymakers and the general public alike.

One major lesson learned from this experience is how much a policy paper evolves over the course of its creation. My original idea underwent many changes as I worked through the process and received feedback. I learned that there is no need for attachment to the first direction I envisioned for the report—in fact, the truly critical writing will naturally evolve as one uncovers more information and develops an argument. Writing sometimes flows, and other times, it’s a frustrating uphill climb. The climb is the point in which I have grown the most!

Katelyn Hung, BMC ’27

(Un)Equitable Development in Chinatown

Semester: Spring 2025

Faculty Advisor: DJ Ferman-Leon

Field Site: Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation

Field Supervisor: Sophia Wan

Praxis Poster: 

PIS_Revised Katelyn Hung - (Un)Equitable Development in Chinatown

 

Further Context:

As a Cities Major with minors in Economics and Data Science, my coursework has consistently explored the causes and consequences of gentrification that disproportionately impact low-income and racial minority communities. This academic foundation sparked my curiosity about the mechanisms for mitigating and preventing gentrification. For my Praxis course, I was fortunate enough to find a role at the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC), an organization whose affordable housing and economic revitalization initiatives allowed me to explore place-based strategies for resisting displacement in ethnic neighborhoods.

As a Neighborhood Planning Intern, my responsibilities ranged from creating infographics about neighborhood programs to more in-depth analysis projects. In this role, I directly supported PCDC’s community development initiatives by contributing research and spatial analysis that informed ongoing planning efforts. One of my tasks consisted of taking pictures of an affordable housing development being constructed in Chinatown. Through this, I began to understand the extensive timeline and the various actors involved in a single housing development project. I also began conducting demographic and economic research through PolicyMap, a software that maps federal data to reveal the nuanced spatial patterns within a given neighborhood like Chinatown. The data I collected helped inform the permanent affordable housing program (via a Community Land Trust) that PCDC is currently planning. My most extensive task was developing a GIS spatial report that identified all the available parking supply in Chinatown. This project was inspired after I reviewed past PCDC surveys where consumers and business owners emphasized the lack of convenient parking. After a conversation with my supervisor, I found out that PCDC had no internal parking study that was up to date, much less one that mapped out parking supply. The Parking Study was the most exciting project for me because I was able to apply my GIS skills to a professional planning setting.

To identify the wider implications of my role at PCDC, Professor Ferman-Leon assigned me readings to explore the broader context of gentrification through histories of urban redevelopment and racial capitalism. Our conversations were enriching and extended my understanding of how neighborhood-level interventions intersect with larger systems of power, finance, and race. His background in community organizing offered great insight into the challenges and opportunities of equitable development.

Overall, this Praxis course was deeply formative for both my academic growth and professional development. I have gained a thorough understanding of the timeline, processes, and partnerships necessary to make a development project come to life. I also learned how long-term planning efforts must respond to the shifting dynamics of a neighborhood over time. This experience offered insight into the role of planning within nonprofit and social justice sectors, and I’m extremely fortunate for the opportunity to learn in a setting closely aligned with my academic and professional goals.

Sally Jamrog, BMC 27′

ARCH B425 Praxis III: Independent Study

Semester: Spring 2025

Faculty Advisor: Wu Xin

Field Site: Philadelphia Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Field Supervisor: Katherine Blanchard

Praxis Poster: 

PIS_SallyJamrog PraxisPoster

 

Further Context:

This spring semester, I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with my friend and fellow Bryn Mawr student Ellie Toyama (‘26) at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum) in their Near East collection archives under the supervision of the Fowler/Van Santvoord Keeper of Near Eastern Collections, Katy Blanchard.

Over the course of these last four months, Ellie and I traveled into Philadelphia from Bryn Mawr two times a week to work on inventorying and digitizing the material in the Near East collection from the site of Beth Shemesh, Israel. These artifacts were excavated in the 1930s by Haverford College and accessioned into the University of Pennsylvania’s collection in 1961, mainly consisting of pottery sherds, bits of ceramic or larger incomplete vessels, but we occasionally worked on stoneware from the same site. We looked at lamps, spindle whorls, loom weights, juglets, Cyprian milk bowls, and grinding stones among many other types of objects. We would work on this project a shelf at a time, taking down 1-2 boxes of material a session, carefully making sure each item in the box corresponded with its location status through the Penn Museum inventory software EMu, and photographing items via “shot-down” or “shot-on” camera angles. For more two-dimensional objects such as smaller pot sherds without much curvature, we used “shot-down” photography, during which photos are taken from an overhead angle. Vessels for which simply turning them over would not provide as much information as would be helpful for a researcher looking at these images online, we would employ the “shot-on” technique, during which the camera is placed on a tripod or held freehand, allowing for more photographic, dimensional perspective on a given object. Evaluating each of these items for photography required forethought, especially for items which were significantly more incomplete than others which also might require props to allow for correct orientational positioning. After each session of photography, we would then rehouse and relabel the objects we brought out of storage, assisting with the general upkeep and maintenance of the archive. We found several “unaccounted for” objects over the course of our project, allowing previously lost material to be logged correctly into EMu, and ended up fully digitizing the Beth Shemesh collection!

Katy also had us help out around archives with any other projects that came up during our working hours. We frequently helped her pull material for different researchers and classes as well as set up safe viewing locations for objects. Katy additionally took us on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Morgan Library in New York City, on which we got to meet the curators of their exhibition highlighting their cylinder seal collection and a couple curators specializing in rare books and manuscripts. I learned an incredible amount about the processes of curation and what goes into thinking about how material should be displayed in a museum setting as well as what a museum ends up having a final say on. It was also valuable to me to be able to compare the differences between the Morgan Library’s way of keeping materials as opposed to the Penn Museum (a primarily purchased vs. primarily excavated collection).

In addition to the fieldwork I engaged in on-site with Ellie, I developed my skills in art historical and archaeological research and observation through practicing formal analysis on a Khirbet Kerak Ware pot from the Near East collection archives, journaling every week on its formal qualities and materiality as well as practicing various methods of archaeological sketching. Sketching accomplished a similar role in broadening my ability to think critically about these objects as our photography fieldwork assignments in that it encouraged me to consider what features of an object convey its most relevant information. The additional readings and research I also completed on Khirbet Kerak Ware and materiality will culminate in a final paper I will submit at the end of finals week this semester which will also encompass my Penn Museum case study observations.

This whole experience has vastly broadened my knowledge on the behind-the-scenes processes of museum work and has given me an incredible skill set to take into future museum work. I have also learned to more critically and closely observe archaeological artifacts, synthesizing methods of art historical formal analysis with the more scientific, deductive eye often employed in the field of archaeology and plan to continue to develop these skills throughout my time at Bryn Mawr, double majoring in History of Art & Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology.

Anne Nguyen, BMC 26′

Experiential Learning for STEM

Semester: Spring 2025

Faculty Advisor: Leslie Cheng

Field Site: The Paradigm Forum GmbH

Field Supervisor: E. Tabi Haller-Jordan

Praxis Poster: 

PIS_Anne Nguyen_Praxis PosterREVISED.pdf

 

Further Context:

This past semester, I worked with Tabi, my filed supervisor, as a research intern on our ongoing project of humanizing technologists at The Paradigm Forum GmbH. This project was a co-creation of Tabi and the intern team started last summer and this Praxis was a continuation of the project since Tabi and I were both very excited to explore it further.

At the beginning of the semester, I explored the barriers and pathways to experiential learning regarding STEM and the way to engaging STEM talents learners in active learning. This led me to develop a learning & reflective journal for college students, particularly in STEM, that accompanies them through their time in college. The journal is created with a goal of enhancing students’ self-awareness and introspection in their values, identity, skills, learning, growth, visions or the lack thereof and encouraging mindsets and habits for change-making.

Some of the themes in the journal currently are values, connection, courage, and mindfulness. This journal uses reflective prompts, such as “When have you taken a risk even though there was no guarantee of desired outcomes?”, provocative texts from books and speeches, concept introductions of helpful practices like loving kindness, exercises targeting areas such as risk-taking and expanding comfort zone, and goals tracker for intentional habit building. This is still a work in progress and is being reiterated to incorporate feedback from students and staffs. I’d like to share a prototype of this journal with more students and staffs to gain different perspectives on whether and how this journal would be helpful for students.

Because I am a math student, questions emerge about how to connect math and humanizing technologists. Since math is commonly considered a very technical subject, which it is indeed, I explored different ways it could be understood and practiced as a humanized subject. Tabi and I had many discussions about what a moral dimension of mathematics, or Moral Mathematics, could look like. Eventually, I created a framework of moral mathematics, an approach and way of understanding and using math considering that impacts of math on humans and society, including 1) life through the mathematical lens, 2) process skills in mathematics, and 3) ethical implications of mathematics. We believe that this framework can be introduced and applied to various technical subjects to better attract students, engage students, and encourage students to think civically, interdisciplinarily, and innovatively. I would love to work with professors and teachers and find ways to implement this framework into math and technical classrooms, whether that is through incorporating experiential learning into the lesson plans or creating spaces students can collaborate and innovate.

I told Tabi that through this experience, I have become so much more interesting and knowledgeable as a person, not just from doing research and reading, but also from observing how she thinks, leads, and communicates. I became more a more intentional story-teller and approached communicating with others from a place of values and visions. And since this internship was a co-creation and learning partnership, I was pushed to be self-motivated and take initiative to steer the direction and assignments of the project. I am extremely grateful for this opportunity to not just be hands-on, but to have agency and “skin-in-the-game”, and get to let my creativity roams freely and to learn so much from doing the work and from my supervisor.