While many students pack up and leave as soon as finals end, some brave Claremont’s summer heat in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Though research opportunities are numerous at the 5Cs during the academic year, students use the summer months to dive much deeper into their individual research topics.
These students find out about research opportunities through classes, professors and open houses. Noah Pershing PZ ’27 first learned about his summer research topic through Introduction to Computational Neuroscience, a class taught by Gautam Agarwal, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Keck.
“I really enjoyed his teaching and his understanding of a lot of these questions and thought [the class] was awesome,” Pershing said. “At the end of the class, he mentioned to me that he would have a spot open in his lab over the summer if I was interested in joining, and I definitely couldn’t say no to that.”
Pershing has been decoding an electrical recording of brain waves from a rat running around a maze, a dataset Agarwal has been working with for over 10 years. Pershing’s job is to estimate how many neurons formed the electric current. He described the project as a stepping stone to even more interesting questions about spatial memory.
“After we figure out that there’s X number of neurons, then we can start asking a lot of cool things,” Pershing said. “So, getting started early as just a rising junior, I get to work through [the data] this summer and then answer those questions next year.”
This type of ongoing research offers hands-on learning across various fields of study. As we all know, cramming the night before a test increases a student’s knowledge, but summer research applies this knowledge to help students learn beyond introductory classes.
Ainsley Murphy SC ’26 has been collecting data on newt breeding in the San Gabriel Mountains since the fall of her sophomore year. This summer she noticed an increase in crayfish that eat newt eggs before they hatch. This change has affected Murphy’s research, which will soon culminate in her senior thesis.
“I think I’m going to skew [my thesis] to be about the crayfish a lot,” Murphy said, “because there definitely is going to have to be intervention if newts want to continue living in these mountains.”
Through her field research this summer, Murphy learned that it can get repetitive to wander alone all day in the mountains and measure the same things day after day. Despite this, Murphy’s experience has solidified her goal to pursue field research as a career.
“Coming into college, I always had the idea that I wanted to go into environmental science field research itself instead of having more of a computer job,” Murphy said, “but I needed to test it out throughout my time in college.”
Testing out a career in science is certainly a worthy reason to stay in Claremont for a season, but so is the research itself. The ability to dedicate time to a single topic over the summer, rather than cramming it alongside schoolwork, allows deeper interaction with the discipline.
“It’s definitely been fun to be here in Claremont at a different time,” Murphy said. “It’s been interesting to see the newts during the summer, especially when it’s just so much hotter and the newts behave differently.”
While not busy with their research projects, students enjoy a quieter, emptier Claremont campus without having to stress about studying for tests or turning in papers.
“It’s definitely people from different groups coming together to hang out,” Murphy said. “It’s nice to be in Claremont and not have so much to worry about and to just enjoy my time here.”
The relaxed summer atmosphere is fun, but it also plays an important role. Topics expand, progress is made and papers are published. After a summer devoted to research, students have a clearer picture of what a future career in research looks like.
Malin Moeller SC ’27 has yet to take her natural science GE, but she still feels intense school pride every time she sees the Nucleus. Now, she’s cementing her STEM-groupie status with a column about summer research.
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