Research Opportunities in the Nisbet Honors Program

If you like challenges, consider taking advantage of research opportunities in the Nisbet Honors Program at Converse. The program can

• supply funding and help you secure additional funding for your research project
• provide an environment where you can rub shoulders with nationally known visiting scholars
• send you to present your research at regional, national and international conferences
• coordinate honors directed independent study courses for you to work with a faculty mentor
• advise you as you prepare to develop your honors thesis project

Research and internship experience can help make the difference between acceptance to a top graduate school and rejection. Recently honors students have competed for and won summer research funds to study the following topics:

• how gender influences the life experience of Tanzanian children orphaned by AIDS
• how caffeine affects the way rats perceive time
• how people who suffer from social anxiety respond to their environment
• how kitsch art portrays the Magi’s journey to the Infant Jesus
• musical allusions in the poetry of Octavio Paz
• whether the frequency of yoga classes affects participants’ blood pressure
• whether the pesticide Sevin produces genotoxic effects in frogs

Honors students have also won spots at prestigious summer experiences such as the following opportunities:

• To research immunology at The Mayo Clinic.
• To be selected as one of 8 students nationwide to study chemistry in a summer program sponsored by the National Science Foundation at the University of Montana-Missoula
• To intern at the award-winning Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska, which has a nationally recognized conservation and genetic research center
• To participate in a NATO Staff Officer Orientation Course at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. 
• To intern at the Engalitcheff Institute on Comparative Political and Economic Systems (ICPES) at Georgetown University

The Honors Program encourages its students to publish their research and creative work and helps students secure funding to present their work at regional, national, and international conferences.

Elly MacPhail ’09 presented her 2006 summer research in a poster session at the Southeastern Regional Music Therapy Conference in Memphis in March 2007.

Elise Stuck ’09 presented a paper, “Dining on the Word: the Portrayal of Scripture and Preaching as Nourishment in Religious Literature of Early Modern England,” at the National Undergraduate Literature Conference in April 2007.  Elise’s paper arose out of her summer research.

Brittany Jones and Stacy Thrall, both ’07, presented a paper at an international conference.  Their paper, “An Efficient Algorithm and Its Parallelization for Computing PageRank,” was co-authored with Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Dr. Jonathan Qiao.  The International Conference on Computational Science was held this summer in China.

With her psychology professor, Jennifer Gray ‘05 co-presented research findings of “The Impact of Extralegal Factors (Defendant Sex, Relationship with Victim) in Sexual Abuse Cases” at an international conference. The two presented their work at the meeting of the American Psychology-Law Society in Scottsdale, AZ.

Amy Stahl ‘05 presented her research paper, “The Dead Clergy Wife: The Written Female Standard in Early Modern England,” at the 2004 National Undergraduate Literature Conference in Ogden, Utah. Research for this paper was funded by a Nisbet Honors Program Summer Research Grant (Summer 2003).

580 East Main Street, Spartanburg, SC 29302
phone: 800-766-1125  email: admissions@converse.edu 

contact webmaster

Dr. Laura Feitzinger Brown
Co-director
Nisbet Honors Program
(864) 596-9115

Dr. John Theilmann
Co-director
Nisbet Honors Program
(864)596-9703