Category: Issue 2.1 – Fall 2020

Amherst College Science Center

“What We Think”: Psychology Lecture on Children’s Social-Emotional Development During COVID-19

On September 17th, 20 students hopped onto a Zoom call to learn about how COVID-19 has impacted children’s social and emotional development. Professor McQuade of the psychology department was joined by Amherst alum Adaora Achufusi ‘13. Specializing in play therapy, Achufusi works in New York as a treatment coordinator at a therapeutic preschool for children…

Accretion Machines

An aerial view of Apache Point Observatory

Introduction This post is the first of a series highlighting the fantastic summer astronomy research Amherst students conducted. For more information on the series, visit this post. This week, Astronomy Department Editor William Balmer (that’s me) interviewed three of the six Follette Lab students who presented at the Colloquium. Beck Dacus ‘22, Cailin Plunkett ‘23,…

Astronomy Summer Research Teams Take Physics Colloquia By Storm

Updated: Oct 16, 2020 On September 8th and 15th, the Physics and Astronomy Department colloquium showcased the summer research of 21 Amherst students during a series of “Flash Talks.” These three-minute presentations gave the students the opportunity to demonstrate their newfound knowledge and share their summer experiences. Despite COVID-19, students worked at a variety of labs…

Lights, Camera… Science?

science center at night

What’s the one thing that STEM students obsess over for a whole summer, spend eons in the lab trying to figure out, and lose hours of sleep over? Data collection. And yet what’s one thing that STEM students put off doing until their poster presentations, slapping together a few graphics in Photoshop and calling it…

The Moss Quantitative Center: An Interview with Director Dr. Innes

With final exams coming up, students are looking for all the extra help they can get. This help can be found at the Moss Quantitative Center, where undergraduate tutors and staff can help with STEM subjects. The Q Center has an interesting history, as Dr. Innes explained: “It actually was created, in its earliest form,…

Incubator: Sharing Underrepresented STEM Stories

STEM incubator

The following statement comes from Claire Hawthorne ‘21, a Social Media coordinator for the Amherst College STEM Incubator Program. The Incubator is a 6-week skills-development program based on a multidisciplinary STEM-focused curriculum that fosters a stronger sense of belonging, strengthens research and career-readiness, and increases the retention and success of our underrepresented minority (URM) and…