Summer of Discovery
This past summer, students and faculty partnered on groundbreaking research that tackled real-world issues while sharpening skills, deepening expertise, and preparing students for future pursuits.
October 06, 2025
Studying freshwater turtles from the Dominican Republic. Exploring the impact of inclusive dance. Developing a documentary drama. Through Rollins’ Student-Faculty Collaborative Scholarship Program, students had the opportunity to engage in the kind of original scholarly research that’s typically available only at the graduate-school level. These powerful partnerships have generated dozens of professional publications, performances, and exhibitions and have paved the way to some of the world’s most prestigious graduate programs. Plus, executives and hiring managers are 86 percent more likely to hire candidates with experience doing a research project collaboratively with faculty.
As last spring turned to summer, we asked students to keep us in the loop as they embarked on their summertime research experiences. Here are a few of our favorites from summer 2025.
Alongside biology professor Brendaliz Santiago-Narvaez, biology major Bennett Coker ’26 studied whether freshwater turtles in the Dominican Republic act as environmental reservoirs for harmful pathogens. The goal was to identify potential Salmonella carriers, assess risks to human health, and explore how turtle-associated bacteria might reflect broader water quality issues.
“I chose this research because it connects public health and environmental biology in a unique and relevant way,” says Coker. “As a biology major on a pre-med track, I’m interested in how diseases like salmonellosis move between animals and humans, especially in areas like the Dominican Republic that are often underrepresented in research.”
The project directly reinforced the concepts and lab techniques Coker studied in her microbiology and genetics courses, giving her hands-on applications that sharpened her lab and critical-thinking skills, improved her ability to interpret data, and built her confidence to work independently and share her results.
"Working with Dr. Santiago-Narvaez was one of the best parts of the experience,” shares Coker. “She was always supportive but also challenged me to think. I learned so much from her, both in and out of the lab. My favorite part was analyzing sequencing data and seeing how all of our work finally came together.”
Sarah Briscoe ’26—a self-designed dance sociology major—conducted research with communication studies professor Sarah Parsloe on the impact of inclusive dance on students’ sense of community and emotional well-being. They partnered with Chance 2 Dance, a local nonprofit that provides inclusive dance classes for kids and adults with special needs and varying disabilities.
“I chose this research because I’ve been teaching at Chance 2 Dance since my freshman year at Rollins, and I have seen firsthand how inclusive dance can build a beautiful community for individuals with varying disabilities,” says Briscoe. “I wanted to look further into its impact on the students and gather data to inform how inclusion and the arts benefit its participants.”
“We have such a rich population of people with disabilities and special needs, but they’re rarely given the opportunity to share their voices and opinions in conversations about inclusion,” she says. “The students I interviewed at Chance 2 Dance said they’ve never gotten to participate in anything like this and have expressed how special it is to them to contribute to this research directly.”
Briscoe hopes to continue teaching dance to people with disabilities and ultimately dreams of opening her own studio. The experience, she says, has given her valuable insight into what makes an inclusive dance space both successful and positive for its students.
Theatre professor Marianne DiQuattro and students Conner Chaumley ’26, Yasmine Hudson ’27, and Max Payton ’27 embarked on a research project to bring Zora Neale Hurston’s legacy to the stage. Their work focused on developing an original documentary drama, Let the People Sing, inspired by Hurston’s 1933 musical revue From Sun to Sun and her anthropological and theatrical pursuits in Central Florida in the 1920s. The team’s process included research trips to Eatonville and collaborative writing sessions on stage at the Annie Russell Theatre to draft scenes together. The resulting play—co-authored by the students alongside DiQuattro—illuminates a little-known chapter of Rollins history and amplifies Hurston’s voice in the very theatre that once excluded her work.
“I chose this research project because it brought together my two passions—working in theatre and studying anthropology,” says Payton. “I was prepared to read and write on Zora because I’d learned all about her in my anthropology classes. I would not be involved in theatre if not for the RCC [Rollins College Conference] course, with my peer mentors encouraging me to work backstage. My time with Rollins Improv Players also taught me what makes a clear and concise scene.”
Theatre arts major Chaumley jumped at this research opportunity because he aims to be a playwright. Along the way, Chaumley says he’s sharpened essential skills like conducting rigorous research, discerning credible information, and strengthening his writing as well as his ability to collaborate, preparing him for the teamwork and critical thinking demanded in the professional world.
For both, the project’s significance runs even deeper: “We hope to bring a bit of Rollins history to the Rollins community,” says Payton, “especially since the names of some of our characters are still on buildings around campus. Let the People Sing also serves as a love letter to Eatonville, Zora’s hometown and a severely underrepresented community.”
Let the People Sing will run November 13–16, 2025, at the Annie Russell Theatre.
Environmental studies and biology double major Makenna Gary ’26 researched frog movement and its implications for conservation management in North America. Alongside environmental studies professor Ian Biazzo, she focused on how anuran (frog and toad) species move within and across ecosystems and the ecological drivers—such as dispersal, migration, and site fidelity—that shape those patterns.
The goal of the project is to identify knowledge gaps and guide future land management strategies. For Gary, the summer research project was an eye-opening dive into the scope of scientific inquiry whereby she gained hands-on skills in R and GIS—tools she notes are “very important for me to use and understand for the future I want to pursue.”
“I chose this research first because I love frogs,” shares Gary. “However, most of my research experiences have been field-based, and I wanted to improve my formal scientific writing and learn how to conduct a meta-analysis. I knew this would help prepare me to conduct my own research in graduate school while at the same time learning more about species I’m interested in.”
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