Spring Semester 2026 – Bryn Mawr College

Cade Fanning, HC ’26

Praxis Course:  HART B420: Museum Studies Praxis Seminar

Semester: Spring 2026

Faculty Advisor/Professor:   Monique Scott

Community Partner:   Historic Annapolis   

Praxis Site Supervisor:   Katie Turer

Praxis Poster: 

HART_CadeFanning_compressed

Further Context: 

This semester, I interned at Historic Annapolis, where I researched the free and enslaved Black craftspeople who worked on the James Brice House. James Brice was a wealthy Annapolitan planter, a prominent local politician, and a member of the city’s elite during and after the Revolutionary War. Between 1767 and 1774, he oversaw the construction of his mansion in downtown Annapolis. Historic Annapolis secured the site in 2014, and embarked on a painstaking restoration process in 2016 that continues to this day.

I was tasked with researching the free and enslaved Black craftspeople who built the house in order to create an interactive touchscreen exhibit. Unlike most contemporary American elites, James Brice was a meticulous record-keeper who recorded nearly every transaction in account books and inventories that survive to this day, creating a wealth of primary sources that is further supplemented by the ads he placed in the local newspaper when a bound worker escaped. Much of my research involved sifting through these primary sources and gleaning information about the craftspeople’s work and lives.

I also conducted significant secondary research in order to situate my primary findings within the context of the era. I attended lectures and explored exhibitions, articles, and books on the topics of colonial craftsmanship and enslaved craftspeople. Deepening my understanding of contemporary systems of free and enslaved craftsmanship allowed me to connect the Brice House laborers to the system of social hierarchy and labor in which they operated. Historic Annapolis’s Comprehensive Interpretation Plan for Brice House presented the organization’s goals for the site and the message they wished to share with visitors, and I focused on connecting my research to that plan.

I discovered that apprenticing enslaved laborers to skilled indentured or convict craftspeople was a common practice among wealthy enslavers like James Brice: it increased the enslaved person’s value and allowed their enslaver to rent out their labor and collect their wages. In short, enslavers viewed it as an investment in their property. However, enslaved craftspeople used their skills to develop their craft and redefine themselves as individuals, not as assets to their enslavers. Their skills allowed them to improve their socioeconomic standing, sometimes even obtaining their freedom and establishing generational wealth.

I used my research to develop a plan for an interactive touchscreen exhibit for the Brice House. Allowing visitors to interact with the stories and accomplishments of the free and enslaved Black craftspeople who built the house reflects the core tenets of the participatory museum—it transforms the museum space from a place of presentation to a place of dialogue. The interactive exhibit involves visitors in their stories and connects them to the history of not just the house, but also to the people who built it.

Catherine Utzinger, BMC ’26

Praxis Course: Praxis Independant Study

Semester: Spring 2026

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Jamie Taylor

Community Partner: JackLeg Press

Praxis Site Supervisor: Jennifer Harris

Praxis Poster:

PIS Catherine R Utzinger

Further Context:

During the JackLeg Press Internship, I had the opportunity to work witha cohort in order to review submissions, network, learn the review and editing process, as well as how an independent publishing firm operates. During the semester, I was responsible for reading submissions that were around 30-40 page submissions through JackLeg’s submission portal and ranking each submission on a scale from 1-5. I then wrote 350-word reviews to justify my ranking and explain whether I thought that each submission should proceed in the submission process. If accepted, the author of the piece would submit their full manuscript for further review.
Every few weeks, we had team meetings with Jennifer Harris and the rest of the JackLeg editorial team to discuss techniques and build our critical skills.

We also got to attend the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Baltimore where we tabled for JackLeg and had the opportunity to speak with authors that the press has published! I also got to network with other independent presses at the Bookfair and exchanged
information with many different people. Listening to panels and readings such as Carmen Maria Machado reading her new short story was so amazing and I also got to meet Maria Pinto, the author of a book that I’ve been reading for my thesis!

Overall, interning at JackLeg has been incredible. I’ve learned how the submission process works at an independent press and I developed important submission review techniques such as how to identify professional craft and sentence variation. I will be continuing to read
submissions for JackLeg over the summer and I look forward to continuing to work with them!

Jane Saltz, HC ’28

Praxis Course: Thorne School Practicum: Bridging Research and Practice

Semester: Spring 2026

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Jodie Baird

Community Partner: Phebe Anna Thorne School

Praxis Site Supervisor: Jodie Baird

Praxis Poster:

PSYCH 215 Josie_Internicola_Tools to touch on

Further Context:

Through my Praxis Course this semester, I had the opportunity to work at the Phebe Anna Thorne School, where I was placed with the mixed-age afternoon class at the preschool on Bryn Mawr’s campus. The Thorne school’s relationship with the Bi-Co was a big draw for me when I was considering attending Haverford, but I hadn’t been able to find time to work at the school up until this semester. When I saw that this Praxis course (Thorne School Practicum: Bridging Research and Practice) offered the chance to combine working at the preschool with learning about early childhood psychology and education, I knew I had to take it. In class every week, we were able to explore various pedagogical approaches to preschool
education, as we discussed research and readings done outside of class, conducted conversations with early education practitioners of several kinds, and shared and reflected upon our own experiences from placement at the Thorne School.

The Thorne School follows a play-based and autonomy-supportive teaching practice, focused on students’ social-emotional development. My placement entailed spending three hours a week in the mixed-age classroom, where I worked with kids aged four- and five-years-old. I built relationships with the students; facilitated play, learning, and inter-personal dynamics; and assisted the teachers with organizational and programmatic tasks. Throughout the semester, I was able to develop my own educational skills, learning from my professor and peers in class, the preschool teachers I worked with, and the students I was assigned to. I learned more about the value of a play-based education, as I got to witness its benefits first-hand, and I found myself growing more intentional as an educator, thinking deeply about everything from my language to my pedagogical approach to learning and teaching. I was especially influenced by my exploration of autonomy-supportive learning and risky play at Thorne, as I was able to witness an environment in which students were encouraged to practice independence, develop confidence and appropriate self-reliance, and make choices for themselves. One example of this comes from the fact that kids could pretty much play with whatever they wanted to for however long they wanted to each day, rather than relying on teachers’ instructions or preferences. Getting to be a part of this setting expanded my understanding of what kids are capable of and provided an example for how I, as an educator, can actively care for children while simultaneously giving them the space they need to grow and flourish.

I feel incredibly grateful for the experiences and knowledge that I’ve gained as a result of this Praxis Course. The Phebe Anna Thorne School is a wonderful place, with welcoming teachers whom I could look up to as educators and remarkably kind students whom I was excited to see each week. The environment of learning and love fostered at Thorne is one that I hope to emulate in my own journey as an early childhood educator, and I know that I’ll keep this course and placement in mind as I continue to
explore education through a psychological, practical, and community-oriented lens.

Camille Hart, BMC ’26 & Mckayla Reyer, BMC ’27

Praxis Course: PSYC215 Thorne School Practicum

Semester: Spring 2026

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Jodie Baird

Community Partner: Phebe Anna Thorne School

Praxis Site Supervisor: Jodie Baird

Praxis Poster:

PSYCH 215 Praxis Poster - Camille Hart and Mckayla Reyer

Further Context:

Camille Hart:
My time at the Phebe Anna Thorne school will not be something I forget. I have always loved spending time with children but this placement showed me that not only do I want to continue working with children in a professional sense, I can. My future is not in education but in medicine where working with children can be very difficult. However, this placement opened my eyes to ways that I can make things like trips to the doctor less stressful and scary for preschool aged children.

For my Praxis Poster presentation, my partner, Mckayla Reyer, and I took a deeper dive into anti-bias education (ABE). This form of teaching is based around the idea that children will notice differences, whether we want them to or not. For instance, some parents and teachers try to help their students become something known as “color blind” where they believe their child doesn’t see a difference in race. However, this doesn’t promote equity, it promotes suppression. This is a form of teaching that helps children become comfortable with differences, able to identify when something isn’t fair, and feel comfortable in speaking up for themselves and others against inequity. Inequity is highly emphasized here, not inequality. Equality would give everyone the same things but that is not how people are. At lunch, would you give the same amount of food to a toddler and a teenager? Equity is important because it meets each child where they are and teaches a version of “fairness” that is not based on quantity.

Thorne school implements ABE in many different ways, some that are obvious, and some that are a little less visible. While classrooms may not represent every difference a child can have, the books in the classroom do their best. There are books with children from a multitude of different ethnicities, family styles, visible disabilities, food, religions, etc. Teachers use language that promotes the acceptance of difference at every opportunity. At snack time, it is common to hear a teacher identify the differences and similarities that are found in the children’s food. When a child says or does something that lets teachers know that they have been influenced by some sort of bias, teachers will gently step in and help guide the student to a different way of thinking. For example, I watched one day as a child explained to another that their food is weird and gross. With a little guidance from the teacher, these two students engaged in a conversation about how there are some foods they like and some they do not and that is okay.

My time at Thorne was an incredible experience and I hope that others choose to work here in the future.

Mckayla Reyer:
The Phebe Anna Thorne Practicum has been a very insightful and engaging course. It has been so exciting to connect the theories and discussions we have in class to our experiences in the classroom, and I have gained several practical skills that I will carry on to the next steps of my life and my career. My favorite part of this course has been building relationships with the
students at Thorne, and my placement visits have often been the highlights of my week! I am grateful to have gained more experience with this particular age group, as I hope to teach in early education after graduating.

A specific topic I got to look deeper into was Anti-Bias Education (ABE), with my classmate Camille Hart. ABE is an approach to teaching that addresses equity, diversity, and justice in developmentally appropriate and engaging ways. This helps students strengthen the social and
emotional skills to confront stereotypes, bias, and discrimination. Exploring how Thorne implements an ABE approach has been particularly helpful in understanding how these often complicated topics can be taught in PreK. I see this through the books and stories that reflect different identities, intentional and open conversations, and by offering a safe space to play and build empathy. It has been fun to be a part of a space that supports self-identity, empathy, and social action, all integrated into learning and play

Lee Cheeseman, BMC ’27

Praxis Course: JackLeg Press Editorial Internship   

Semester: Spring 2026

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Daniel Torday  

Community Partner: JackLeg Press

Praxis Site Supervisor: Dr. Jennifer Harris

Praxis Poster:  

PIS LeeCheeseman

Further Context:

This semester, I served as an editorial intern for JackLeg Press, a small independent publisher of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and drama. I’d been trying (and failing) to get a publishing/editorial internship since the summer before my freshman year of college so I was so excited this opportunity came along! My work consisted of reading through JackLeg’s backlog of fiction and creative nonfiction queries, short excerpts authors submit from longer completed manuscripts. I rated and reviewed each piece based on JackLeg’s specific standards and gave my recommendations for whether I believed they should move on to the next round of evaluation. While most of the pieces I read were not to my taste or not up to JackLeg’s standards, I still felt like I was learning from everything I read. In almost every piece I found an element of syntax, style, or language that I could incorporate into my own writing. I also encountered genres and types of writing that I never would’ve sought out on my own, broadening my horizons and understanding of what literary fiction and creative nonfiction can be.

In my coursework, I read The World She Edited by Amy Reading, a biography of Katerine S. White, a Bryn Mawr alumna who went on to become an incredibly influential fiction editor at The New Yorker. I went on to apply many of the things I learned about her editorial process to my own work with JackLeg. It was also just fascinating to learn about the life and legacy of a Bryn Mawr alumna who I hadn’t before heard of, I even found out we shared many things in common! For example, she was an editor for the Tipyno’bob, Bryn Mawr’s student literary magazine during her time and I’m an editor for Nimbus, Bryn Mawr’s current literary magazine!

One of the coolest aspect of my internship was that I got to go to AWP, the largest conference for writers and publishers in North America! It was an amazing opportunity to feel for the first time that I was surrounded by a community of writers and artists all supporting one another. I went to panels on a wide array of topics hosted by writers I deeply admire such as Deesha Philyaw and Richard Siken.

In my time with JackLeg I absolutely felt myself grow both as a writer and an editor. The skills I learned from reading and critiquing so many pieces are absolutely valuable in their own right but they also helped me bring a more critical eye to my own creative writing which will be incredibly useful to me as I prepare to begin my creative writing capstone next semester.

Praxis Title: Praxis Independant Study

Semester: Spring 2026

Community Partner: Hebrew Immigration Aid Society of Pennsylvania

Praxis Site Supervisor: Rona Gershon

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Marissa Golden

Praxis Poster:

PIS Rai Mitra Thakur

Further Context:

I wanted to work in the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) Pennsylvania because I wanted to understand the immigration crisis in the U.S. on a deeper level. As an intake intern this spring, I was able to get a much closer look and directly talk to multiple people about their experiences and see first hand the legal effects that the current administration has on these individuals. I interacted with clients one-on-one through the intake process, which I highlighted at the top of my poster. The intake process would be done through phone call, and I would always make sure if I needed to also contact a translator.

The client base for this non profit organization centers around immigrants, which include people who are not proficient in English. Especially with how complicated the immigration process is, the role of translators is so crucial for transparency. By using a familiar language to connect with the client, there is an already more established footing for the client to explain their story to the fullest extent without the constraints of a language barrier. The question and answer section of the process is meant to figure out what sort of immigration relief the client is seeking and their background.

The question and answer section is also the most time taking part of the process because I am transcribing and summarizing the details of the clients background into legal writing. Additionally along with their narrative, I ask questions related to what services the client is looking for. Afterwards I then enter the client’s information into the databases for HIAS PA. The whole intake process would not be useful if the recordkeeping was inefficient and there were too many details missing on the record, making it vital to ask clarifying questions and making sure their story is properly illustrated.

The clinics in HIAS PA were my most favorite events during this semester. I enjoyed witnessing the collaboration between different groups that share similar goals, such as ALCAMO and pro-bono attorneys. Having clinics was also a way to tackle a lack of funding by still being accessible to clients. These clinics can be found in neighborhoods or easy to reach physical spaces. The audience can be pre-built as well depending on the purpose of the clinic, an example being if it was specifically a session about doing paperwork around getting U.S. citizenship.

When we are unable to take a client’s case we don’t leave the client with no other options, instead we provide a pre-made list of attorneys and organizations that might have the capacity in their area. There are also cases where we send the clients information about “Know Your Rights”, which centers around understanding your rights if there is ever an encounter with law enforcement. I really loved the Know Your Rights information that HIAS PA compiled thoughtfully that links to other resources and videos, especially with how frightening it is for immigrants to encounter law enforcement and ICE at this period in time.

Finally, for my broader reflections, I really was disappointed to see that a lot of the forms of relief available for immigrants mainly center around trauma. This is true for the Asylum status, T-Visa, U-Visa, VAWA, and more all of which force the victim to use their trauma to stay in the United States. The funding for non-profits like HIAS have been cut massively, forcing the workforce to shrink and ultimately have to pivot in their strategies of helping immigrants navigate immigration. HIAS PA does this by strengthening their legal advocacy team and hosting more clinics. Lastly, while HIAS PA is meant to only intake the cases of those that are the most impoverished under the poverty line, I believe that the current poverty line is too high. I believe that those who are just above the poverty line are still significantly struggling financially and need more access to affordable prices. Overall, this entire experience has opened my eyes about immigration processes and I was so fortunate to have this opportunity to hear from the Philly Immigrant community directly.

Priyanka Regmi, BMC ’27

Praxis Course: Language Research in Autism

Semester: Spring 2026   

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Sarah Conlin

Community Partner: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Praxis Site Supervisor: Meg Lyons

Praxis Poster:  

PIS Prii Regmi

Further Context:

This semester, I had the opportunity to work at Dr. Julia Parish-Morris’s Social Attention and Language (SoAL) Lab at the Center for Autism Research (CAR) at CHOP. The lab focuses on studying clinical language and social attention in individuals with neurodevelopmental or psychiatric differences, with the goal of better understanding social communication across the lifespan. A key focus of the lab is using tools like natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to study communication, especially in understudied groups such as autistic girls.

My main work in the lab was on the SAGA (Sex and Gender in Autism) study, which looks at early development and sex differences in children. This study examines how autistic and non-autistic children communicate and interact through interviews and conversations, as well as structured research and clinical tasks. Study visits include activities like eye-tracking, parent-child interaction, and friendship questionnaires, along with clinical assessments such as language tests, IQ tests, and autism evaluations. Seeing how all of these pieces come together helped me understand how research can capture both social and clinical aspects of development.

A large part of my role involved transcribing natural language data from interviews and conversations across different studies. These included interactions between participants and clinical research staff, psychologists, parents, and peers across a wide age range. This work required close attention to detail and showed me how complex and nuanced communication can be. I also helped with data entry, organizing information from run-sheets and questionnaires into REDCap while maintaining confidentiality and accuracy.

Beyond these tasks, I had the chance to shadow in-person study visits for the SAGA project, which gave me a better sense of how research is conducted in real clinical settings.

One of the most meaningful parts of this experience was seeing how the SoAL lab focuses on autistic girls as an understudied group. Working on SAGA deepened my interest in research on underrepresented communities and the gaps that still exist. I’vealways been interested in social justice and understanding how structural inequalities affect mental health, and this experience helped connect that to my academic goals. Learning that many diagnostic tools are based mostly on male samples and hence may miss autistic girls, made the work feel especially important and showed me why this research really matters.

Faith Somers, BMC ’27 & Alex Delgado, HC ’28

Praxis Course: Data in Action: Non-Profits and Data

Semester: Spring 2026

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Jennifer Spohrer

Community Partner: PHENND/CASE

Praxis Site Supervisor: Hillary Kane and Janine Wright

Praxis Poster:

DSCI Faith Somers_Summer Melt Praxis Project Poster Final

Further Context:
This semester, we had the opportunity to work with the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development (PHENND), a network of over 25 colleges and universities that focuses on “service-learning, civic engagement, and community partnership in Philadelphia” (phennd.org).

The organization has many diverse programs relating to achieving these goals in the Philadelphia region (College Success Network, PHENND Sustainability, Democratic Civic Engagement, etc.). Our project has focused on college completion and success strategies, specifically on reducing summer melt in the transition from high school to college. Another
organization we worked with is the College Access and Success Ecosystem (CASE), a collective impact forum focused on increasing high school and college graduation rates for Philadelphia students. Our two partners at PHENND serve as the co-chairs for CASE’s On Track to College Graduation Action Team.

To begin our project, we spent some time on a literature review, investigating the most relevant and recent literature on National Summer Melt, to plan out how to shrink the scope to the Philadelphia area. They had defined Summer melt as, “the phenomenon of college-intending
students who have applied to, been accepted by, and made a deposit to a college or university, but fail to matriculate to that college (or any other) in the fall following their high school graduation”(MCAN). We were unsure whether this definition fully captured every institution’s protocol when considering the various dates a student could be considered melted or if an
enrollment deposit was the determining factor.

We wanted to broaden our understanding of institution-based Summer Melt, so we applied our learnings in forming qualitative questions for our prospective institutions. We brought the valuable insights from involved faculty within our communities, as well as the insights from weekly meetings with our PHENND partners, to begin our outreach to Philadelphia colleges and universities.

The outreach we performed was incredibly helpful, both for our project and for our individual learning. We were able to create a set of questions that we asked each institution that explored the way they thought about and handled summer melt. At first, we kept each of these survey sets in a document, and then later transferred all the information into a spreadsheet, which allowed us to explore the ways different types of institutions handled summer melt through visualizations. We identified that some of the top risk indicators included that a student had not planned out their bill payments and had not attended orientation, despite signing up.

We defined Summer Melt using the institutions for which the definition was intended. In collecting the responses of each Philadelphia area institution we interviewed, we have come up with this definition:When a high school graduate demonstrates verified intent to enroll in a postsecondary institution but does not matriculate by a defined cutoff date (such as the first day of classes). We also thought to dig deeper into who does not fall into the category of what Summer Melt is, i.e., students who formally defer enrollment or students who do not demonstrate verified intent (enrollment deposit, for example).

On March 24th, we had an amazing opportunity to attend a CASE meeting where each of their action teams presented short summaries of their recent successes and plans. We were also able to hear from Katharine Meyer, an expert in evidence-based principles for reducing summer melt, who gave us incredibly useful information on some specific tactics like behavioral nudges and messaging, counselor-led summer outreach, peer or near-peer support, and summer bridge programs. We encountered many of these topics in our early research, and it was very helpful to learn more about the specifics from Katharine. Lastly, this meeting gave us critical insight into
the importance of highly communicative, cross-departmental work that is necessary to implement anti-melt strategies. The format of CASE and their meetings modeled the communication and commitment needed from colleges and universities looking to reduce their summer melt rates.

Another opportunity we were given was to speak with Jim Ramey at UPenn, who works closely with UPenn’s High School programs. We were able to have a meeting with him about the uses of Slate (online program for postsecondary onboarding/admissions processes) for reducing summer melt. He uses Slate to monitor student progress through post-deposit enrollment checkpoints. Ramey reads them as behavioral signals: students who stop engaging with checklist items after paying their deposit are flagged as high risk for melt and contacted directly. Our takeaways from this meeting were in line with the information we had gathered from all of
our other meetings with institutions. For example, Ramey emphasized UPenn’s previous issues with data disconnections across their different schools that have summer programs. There is often no centralized view of a student’s status. Additionally, he highlighted that effective melt prevention is labor-intensive, something we had also come across as a barrier for other institutions. Lastly, Ramey underscored the importance of human verification of checklist completion tasks. Students often accidentally turn in the wrong documents or miss a step of a task, meaning that automated completion indicators must be audited by staff. It was amazing to see the inside working of Slate, and this meeting helped us solidify the strengths and constraints of our project.

In the future, we would love to see more investigation into the summer melt practices at institutions beyond the Philadelphia area. With broader/more data from different institutions, it would be great to develop some practical data analytics that would solidify what works best to reduce summer melt. We were able to learn about an example of a model that identifies high-risk students based on their summer checklist completion progress. We will base a lot of our recommendations on how an institution might be best able to move towards a similar model. Lastly, we are hopeful that there could be some developments between relationships among high school counselors and college onboarding teams. The trust students have built with their
guidance counselors and their proximity to those individuals is very helpful in reducing summer melt, however, most counselors are not employed on a 12-month schedule, only a 10-month.

This project and Praxis course was incredibly helpful for our personal developments and skillsets. We both learned a lot about communicating with outside institutions and effectively gathering data. We are very grateful for this opportunity to work with PHENND and CASE.

Nina Hamilton, Nicole Huang, Krish Gupta, & Olivia Li

Praxis Course: DSCI 310: Data in Action   

Semester: Spring 2026   

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Jennifer Spohrer   

Community Partner:  The Barnes Foundation

Praxis Site Supervisor: Marie Edland and Liza Herzog

Praxis Poster:

DSCI 310 Nina_Hamilton_Barnes Poster

Further Context:

Hi! Our names are Nina, Nicole, Krish, and Olivia!

For our Praxis project, we are working with the Barnes Foundation as part of our DSCI B310: Data into Action course. The Barnes Foundation is an art institution based in Philadelphia, whose purpose is to support education in fine arts and horticulture.

For this project, we were given a large set of anonymized data from the Barnes Foundation and were told to conduct analysis of any kind. And so, our first step would be to design a study that:

1. Is impactful and useful for our partners
2. Can be completed within a semester (or less in our case)

We determined that our goal would be to analyze visitation trends and conduct additional cool analysis that would provide instructions to improve Barnes programming and engagement.

More specifically, we wanted to identify visitor-to-membership conversion trends, public programming and engagement, and visitation and membership trends with respect to location (zip codes).

One of our goals was to see which of the Barnes events were the most popular among members and non-members. While there were many events between 2022 and 2024, we focused on about 15 types of events present in the data (like group tours, free admission days, talks, etc.) that made up a majority of the data outside of general admission. We found that events which were free to the public (Free First Sundays and Barnes on the Block) had the biggest non-member visitors, which makes sense because it caters to groups that may not want to pay or afford to pay for regular tickets! This analysis was interesting because oftentimes members bought tickets for guests, and there were a lot of individual events that had to be grouped together in order to make these larger event types, so there was some nuance to what the number of people that attended each event meant. While it was difficult to organize the data into these groups, it was a good learning experience and provided interesting insights for our partners.

Another goal of this project was to understand where in the Philadelphia area Barnes visitors are coming from. The map visualizes visitation data across two dimensions, total visitor volume and membership share. Circle size reflects the number of total visitors from each zip code, while color indicates the percentage of those visitors who are members, ranging from warm red for low membership rates to deep blue for high. Unsurprisingly, the largest circles cluster around the zip codes in closest proximity to the museum. More revealing, however, is the color pattern. Several suburban zip codes show the darkest blue, indicating disproportionately high membership rates, while many zip codes within Philadelphia proper, particularly those with lower median incomes, tend to appear smaller and redder. This contrast suggests that Barnes has built strong loyalty among a suburban base but has room to grow both visitation and membership conversion closer to home. The aim of this analysis is twofold: to identify new areas the Barnes can target with outreach to drive first-time visits, and to spotlight communities where membership is already strong so the institution can invest in retention and deeper engagement.

We were interested in identifying patterns that lead to membership applications to the Barnes. And so, reflected by the top chart on the right, we analyzed the visitation count before a visitor decides to become a member, color-coded by the last event they visited before becoming a member. Surprisingly, most individuals who became members enrolled after their first visit.

To dig more deeply into specifics, we decided to study which programming event the members attended last, which led to their membership (chart on the bottom right). This analysis would help Barnes identify which events were most successful in promoting similar events in the future. The data is calculated by finding the percentage of individuals who became members among all those who attended the same program.

Like any project, our work has some limits. It is important to know them.

First, the data only showed if a visitor was a member on the day they visited. It did not show when they bought the membership. So when we say an event led to someone joining, this is just our best guess. A person may have bought a membership online days before. They may also have been moved by a visit many months earlier. We cannot know for sure. Our findings show useful patterns. But they do not prove what caused people to join.

Second, we did not have qualitative data to analyze. All of our data was numbers — ticket records, visit counts, and zip codes. We did not have interviews, survey answers, or visitor comments. For example, we can see which events came before someone joined. But we cannot hear in their own words what made them want to become a member. Qualitative data would help explain the story behind the numbers.

We want to be clear about these limits. This helps the Barnes team trust our findings in the right way. It also shows where the best next questions are.

Sofia Platzman, BMC ’27

Praxis Course: Praxis Independant Study

Semester: Spring 2026

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Professor Corredor

Community Partner: U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI)

Praxis Site Supervisor: Mary Lagdameo

Praxis Poster:

PIS Sofia_Platzman_Praxis Poster Final- SP

Further Context:

Over my first semester of interning with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), my entire academic focus has become concentrated on the work I am doing with USCRI and immigration policy. I have always held a deep passion for immigrant justice, due to personal relationships in my life, yet it was not until my sophomore year of college at UC San Diego that I learned about opportunities for immigration-related advocacy, through a course called “The Politics of Immigration.” This course created the foundation of knowledge for immigration policy that led me to intern at USCRI as a Bryn Mawr transfer student.

For the past four months, I have interned for the Development Team at USCRI. When I began this position, I hardly knew the function of grants for nonprofits, much less how to write one. I understood that the Trump administration was targeting organizations supporting migrants and refugees, but I did not comprehend the real-life, painful impacts of these attacks. Now, I understand the immense and immeasurable impact grants can offer, as well as the consequences of the Trump’s administration cruel policy changes.

My internship began with an onboarding process that involved bringing myself up to speed on the current state of immigration policies in the United States. I watched webinars, read briefings, engaged with news articles, and wrote up summaries of all that I learned. Next, I began to enter into the world of grants. I started out by researching potential grants that we could apply to. This project evolved into becoming involved with the work of ending the grants themselves. Through these steps, I began to learn the ins and outs of what goes into writing grants: from the research to the communication with field offices and other teams to the draining of a budget and creation of the grant itself. I am now working on drawing one $20,000 grant to support USCRI’s legal services and one $100,000 grant to fund a virtual ESL program. These two grants have provided me with an invaluable foundation in the work that goes into grant-writing.

As one example of the intersection between grant-writing work and immigration advocacy, on October 17th, USCRI announced the closure of Rinconcito del Sol, a shelter for unaccompanied migrant girls, due to a reduction in federal funding. From my current position of understanding the role of funding in decisions such as this one, I wish there was a grant large enough to have saved this program from the Trump administration’s budget cuts. Given that the focus of my interests is intersection of migration and gender/sexuality studies, this news touched me deeply. It feels like a permanent reminder that the work I am doing at USCRI—actively addressing funding gaps and identifying communities in need of that funding—has tangible consequences. For all the forces out there trying to harm migrants in this country, we need just as many to fight alongside migrant communities.

If anything, this understanding, of the role we can all play in supporting migrants’ fundamental rights and of the countless people working to protect these rights day in and day out, has been my greatest takeaway from this internship so far. It is so easy to become disillusioned from reading the news and looking at actions, such as the closure of Rinconcito del Sol, yet there are so many people out there fighting for justice—for what is right. It is the privilege of a lifetime to witness the endless passion and care and curiosity shown by this community of migrants, survivors, activists, leaders, grant-writers, field office managers, and more.

I am excited to see where my academic focus on immigration justice will carry me. Over the summer, I will be heading to study abroad at the London School of Economics and Political Science and will be taking a course called, “International Migration: Power, Policy and Lived Realities.” This focus of study will extend into next semester at Bryn Mawr with the course, “Cities and Immigration.” I will also be continuing my internship at USCRI next semester but working as a branch between the Development Team and the Policy & Advocacy Team; this opportunity will be an incredible new direction to continue developing my grant writing skills, while also learning more about the policy side of immigration work. If there is any message I can leave to readers, please remember: for all of the despair surrounding attacks on immigrants’ rights, there are even more people who will never give up in the pursuit of justice. There is even greater hope in this world than there is violence.