During the first two weeks of the CAAD period, I was tasked with continuing the research work I had previously done, revolving around Professor Gil Sheridan’s play, Marielitos. This involved searching through archival footage to find relevant details and images surrounding the Mariel boatlift and its aftermath. I also used these resources to construct a timeline for the life of Rene Valdes, the subject of the musical.

For the following four weeks, I switched to doing research for Professor Gil-Sheridan’s other play, Moonfall/Landfall (There was a one week space in between, in which I filled in as a music assistant for a staged reading of the first act of Marielitos). The topics underlying the development of this play led me in a number of directions research wise. I made a timeline with information documenting the 1969 moon landing and related events, in order to provide a base of knowledge for writing.

I made a similar timeline outlining the complex history of US/Cuba political relations (including details from my earlier work on the Mariel boatlift). I compiled and summarized details about climate change history and legislation, and completed a review of existing representations of climate change on stage and screen. I also performed a review of the intricacies of prejudice between and toward immigrant populations, partially within the context of Cuban migration to the US. This work specifically was geared towards answering questions about intergenerational racism and radical shifts in political thought, also adding to the basis for future writing.

Xiaonuo Zhang ’27, working under Professor Zhengren Zhu

College courses provide students with valuable knowledge and skills, but measuring the types of skills developed through coursework remains challenging. This project explores a data-driven approach to understanding how college syllabi reflect the skills students acquire and how these skills relate to workforce needs.

This project builds upon the Syllabus2ONET framework introduced by Sabet et al. (2024), which uses natural language processing techniques to infer workplace skills taught in university courses by mapping syllabus content to ONET Detailed Work Activities (DWAs).

We extend this framework by examining alternative preprocessing and sentence-selection approaches to improve the extraction of course-level skill profiles. A major challenge in this process was that syllabi often contain large amounts of general administrative information, such as grading policies and course procedures, which do not represent actual learning outcomes. To address this challenge, I explored improved text preprocessing methods, including TF-IDF-based sentence selection, to identify more relevant course content before mapping syllabi to skills.

Early trials suggest that these refinement steps are moving in a promising direction, pointing toward cleaner instructional text and more coherent skill profiles. The results show that careful preprocessing plays an important role in extracting meaningful skill patterns from educational materials. The improved pipeline provides a clearer representation of the skills emphasized in different academic subjects and creates opportunities for comparing skill development across fields of study.

This project provides an initial step toward measuring human capital development through educational experiences. Working on this project has been an invaluable opportunity to apply computational text analysis to empirical economic questions, and I am grateful for Professor Zhu’s guidance. Future work will extend this framework by connecting extracted course skills with occupational requirements (SOC-code) and using these measures to better understand differences in skill development across student populations.

Anni Yu ’27

This summer, I worked with Professor Alicia Atwood examining healthcare adequacy among veterans. Previous research finds that male veterans tend to have better healthcare access. Extensive literature documents persistent gaps in healthcare access and outcomes across racial groups. Yet, the these factors does not standalone; they interact to shape healthcare experiences. Our project builds on existing research and examines this intersection by comparing healthcare access among Black and White veterans with their nonveteran counterparts.

To measure healthcare adequacy, we examined changes in preventative care utilization around age 65, when Medicare eligibility provides near-universal health insurance coverage. We selected preventative care as our outcome variable, as these services are broadly recommended at the same frequency, thus a good proxy for access rather than a reflection of health status. The rationale of our study is that a larger increase in utilization after eligibility indicates limited previous access.

My work began with literature review and replication of adjacent research to establish a foundation for our study, followed by cleaning RAND Health and Retirement Study dataset in Stata and Excel and conducting exploratory visualizations to uncover healthcare utilization trends and identify control variables to inform our empirical analysis decisions.

After that, we spent the majority of our time designing and refining our econometric models. The approaches we selected are regression discontinuity designs, triple-difference models, and fixed effects regressions. The first provides clear visualizations (see below), while the latter two allow us to better isolate the association between Medicare eligibility and healthcare utilization and strengthen causal interpretation.

Since access is influenced by various factors, including commonly-known ones such as education, wealth level, and geographic location, as well as more nuanced factors such as veteran cohort, interview year (capturing macroeconomic conditions, healthcare guideline changes, healthcare policy changes, etc.), and demographic interaction terms, we designed numerous alternative control and bandwidth specifications to evaluate the robustness of our findings.

Working on this project has been an invaluable opportunity to apply and strengthen the econometrics and data analysis skills I developed in the classroom to empirical research. I am grateful to Professor Atwood for her guidance and support, and I look forward to continuing our research in the fall by incorporating additional datasets and further contextualizing our findings!

Nika Ungurianu

This summer I worked with Professor Tcherkassova in researching the Datsan Gunzechoinei in St. Petersburg. The goal of this project was to examine how Buddhism, which was the indigenous religion of rather small groups at the edges of the empire, became anchored in the imperial capital, and also influenced religious philosophy, literature, and visual arts. Among the fascinating questions of our research was the way in which the Datsan merged with the city not only spiritually, but also aesthetically and architecturally. 

The first Buddhists in St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire, were Kalmyks and Buryats, Mongolian peoples, coming from the Eastern and Southeastern borders. They practiced a variety of Tibetan Buddhism, which is known in Russia as Lamaism. At the beginning of the 20th century, the local population of Buddhists had outgrown the use of private apartments as houses of worship, and the construction of a Buddhist temple was initiated by the emissary of the 13th Dalai Lama, Agwan Lobsan Dorjiev. With all that, the population of ethnic Buddhists in St. Petersburg was rather insignificant, and they lacked financial resources for building their own temple. Crucial for the enterprise was the support that came from Russian artists, intellectuals, and aristocrats, as Buddhism was becoming increasingly fashionable throughout the Western world. A board of trustees was formed to oversee the construction of a Datsan, which is the term for a Buddhist monastery of Tibetan tradition that acts as both an educational and religious center. 

The design and construction of the temple involved prominent artists and architects of the Silver Age, which is the Russian term for ‘Belle Epoque’. The overall design belongs to Gavriil Baranovsky, the architect best known for the Eliseyev Emporium in St. Petersburg, one of the most vibrant examples of the Art Nouveau style in the city. Among chief artistic contributors was Nicholas Roerich, a major painter who was infatuated with Buddhism in the context of his interest in Theosophy and religious experimentation (decades later he would declare himself the Dalai Lama of the West). He was aided by Buryat artists in designing the interior of the temple, including the stained glass windows of the prayer hall. Gunzechoinei was built in the tradition of Transbaikal datsans, fulfilling all the requirements of the Buddhist building canon. This unique combination of traditional Buddhist imagery and conspicuously Petersburgian Northern Art Nouveau style created a veritable architectural masterpiece that became a prominent addition to the numerous houses of worship of various religions in Russia’s Imperial capital.

View of the entrance to the temple.

Roerich’s stained glass window designs from the interior of the temple.

Another important aspect of the project is examining the public discourse and debates in connection with the construction of the Datsan. While during the turn of the century St. Petersburg was extremely cosmopolitan and tolerant, there were objections to the construction coming from some conservative Orthodox clergy and politicians. However, the supporters of the project prevailed, as they included prominent academicians, artists, and public figures such as Prince Esper Ukhtomsky, who had close ties to Emperor Nicholas II.

The construction of the Datsan was completed in 1913 and it performed its first worship on the day of the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanovs. It faced a tumultuous future through the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the early Soviet years, and was eventually closed in 1933. It was reopened as a house of worship in 1990, and since then has become an important Buddhist center in Russia.

A group of St. Petersburg’s Buddhists and Datsan trustees outside the temple, 1914. Photographer: Karl Bulla

Boys Love, otherwise known as BL, is an immensely complex genre with a rich history. Originally developed from Shoujo Manga(comics) by women writers around the 70s in Japan, it is now a global phenomenon. It is a romance genre where generally, the two protagonists are both men. Now, hundreds of mangas have been adapted into television shows, and it is loved and revered by viewers around the world from China, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan, and even America in recent years. 

You may have never heard of the genre BL. You might have already watched dozens of BL TV shows. You might even hate it or have a lot of critiques of it. The goal of this summer project was to consider all of these different perceptions of BL, and see how it is playing a role in the Japanese context of entertainment production, as well as feminist and queer politics. 

Professor Schneider had already conducted interviews in Thailand and Taiwan, but this time he was going to devote his summer to Japan. Before we even started contacting people to interview during our trip to Japan, I had to familiarize myself with the history of BL, queer theory, and Japanese culture. I found out that BL comics were mostly enjoyed by women around the world, in regions like East Asia where misogyny, patriarchy, and Confucianist family values are so deeply rooted in society. Women consequently turned to writing and consuming BL where they can use this fantasy world as a facet to freely explore romance and sexuality through two characters who are on equal footing(as opposed to a heterosexual romance where this is a gendered dynamic between a man and a woman).

We also watched dozens of BL TV shows. This ranged from very Shoujo manga-esque TV shows, to more political ones– ones that challenged and pushed the boundaries of what we know as BL. We also looked into the challenges surrounding “political correctness” in media, and how this may prevent the creation of more complex narratives.

With this, we decided to cold email dozens of directors, producers, and actors who were involved with BL television shows in Japan. To our surprise, most of the directors got back to us and agreed to have an interview with us. 

In the end, we were able to interview around 12 different people within the span of 3 weeks. This ranged from intimacy coordinators, LGBTQ non-profits, directors, actors, producers, and screenwriters. These interviews ranged from 1 hour to 3 hours, so I could probably write a whole book about it– but that is exactly what Professor Schneider is doing, so you will have to hear the further details of the interviews by reading his book. But to say the least, it was such a pivotal experience for me. Being able to engage in insightful conversations with creative people who really are taking the time to think about Japanese media and the entertainment industry was a very hopeful experience. Growing up in Japan was a bit suffocating for me as a Korean person, and I think it still would be. However, this experience made me more optimistic as I was exposed to people who care a lot about producing good media, and are critically thinking about how to improve the negative and dark sides of the Japanese entertainment industry, as well as Japanese queer politics. This is also one of the most important times to be thinking about LGBTQ politics in Japan, as this year 2026 is the year that the Supreme Court is going to decide whether same-sex marriage is legalized or not. I can only hope that this popularity of BL leads to an alliance between gay men and women viewers who enjoy BL to support LGBTQ politics in Japan.

Irene Chun ’27 with Professor Schneider

Charlie Townsend ’27, under Professor Kyle Coombs

This summer, I worked alongside Professor Kyle Coombs, examining the interaction between the rise in youth sports, and decline in organized religious participation over recent decades. 

This process began by constructing the primary data set, where I toiled with OCR pipelines, built Python cleaners, and used Microsoft Azure to extract state-sport level data from National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) records. This provided us a strong measure of youth sports engagement by state and sport from 1969-2009. Alongside this, I built up the religious membership side of the analysis, using Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) records spanning 1983-2013, and the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) records, which contained county level membership data for multiple religions across 1980-2010. 

Our main focus over the summer was looking at the 1994 World Cup, hosted in the United States, to see if the boom in soccer participation following the tournament created a measurable shift in religious participation. To do so, we compared host stadium states, followed by host counties, to the rest of the country. The different geographical scales required the use of ZIP-to-county and county-to-commuting zone crosswalks, which I handled using VSCode and R. 

We tested this through multiple different methods, starting at national and state level correlations. From there I looked at fixed effect panel regressions to account for state specific baselines and national trends, and then difference in difference models, comparing host states and counties to non-hosts, using the host state announcement year, 1992, as the treatment year. Across these tests, only a small number of results appeared to be statistically significant, however, were inconsistent with direction.

We then applied a similar framework to investigate if state legislation that shifted liability protections from parental volunteers to youth sports organizations had an effect on sports participation. For this, I constructed staggered DiD models, with state specific treatments being the year a bill was passed. This showed no consistent relationship between legislation passing and participation. 

Overall, the summer provided an amazing opportunity to understand the workflow and timeline of academic research, as well as a space to grow my technical skills in R, Python, VSCode, Github, and more, outside of the classroom.

Madeline Hsiao ’27 and Professor Jannay Morrow

This summer, I continued working with Professor Jannay Morrow on psychology research exploring avoidant personality disorder (AvPD) and building on findings from our URSI project last summer. Our research examines the psychological mechanisms underpinning the adverse influence of AvPD on mental health outcomes, particularly psychological well-being and interpersonal relationships.

Our URSI project investigated the role of experiential avoidance (EA) as a possible mediating and/or moderating variable affecting the relationship between elevated AvPD traits, well-being, and interpersonal distress. All mediation pathways in our model were significant, suggesting that EA may partially explain the effects of AvPD on well-being.

Building on these findings, we designed this year’s Ford Projects to further investigate these mechanisms and identify factors that may reduce the adverse effects of AvPD. Professor Morrow allowed me to conceptually shape the study direction by selecting a variable of interest. I chose self-compassion (SC), leading to the central research question: Does self-compassion buffer the negative effects of elevated AvPD traits and EA on well-being?

Our process began by reviewing literature on AvPD and EA, leading us to consider SC as a possible explanatory factor in their relationship. We examined current evidence on SC, AvPD, EA, and well-being, evaluated measures and self-compassion induction methods, and reviewed statistical approaches used in similar studies, with particular interest in serial mediation models. Simultaneously, we worked on expanding our related URSI project into a full research manuscript for future submission to a peer-reviewed, open-access journal.

We launched an initial correlational, proof of concept study and are currently about to launch a quasi-experimental online study in which participants engage in either a self-compassion writing exercise or a control group. This project will bridge URSI findings with those of the correlational SC project. Afterwards, we will collect and clean the data and begin our statistical analyses.

The Data Analysis for Behavioral Economics Ford project seeks to investigate how the value of favors appreciates or depreciates over time. Put simply, “If someone did you a favor, how does that affect your willingness to do someone else a favor?”

The behavior of interest is door holding, where favor size is operationalized as time. Door-holding was chosen as it is an easily observable, novel, everyday behavior. Time can be viewed as an economic resource. From this, we investigate economic decision-making through the lens of favors and upstream reciprocity (ie., paying it forward).  Other factors that may influence the appreciation/depreciation of favors: distance, the number of followers, culture, gender norms, etc. 

What distinguishes this project from previous studies is our use of public feeds for data collection. With the rapid development of computer vision and LLM tools, the grand vision of this project is to have a fully automated analysis pipeline, where hundreds upon thousands of samples may be observed across different locations, cultures, and countries. Further, natural observation affords greater external validity.

Project Overview

This summer, I worked as the Ford Scholar under Professor Paravisini-Gebert and Professor Aronna for Vassar’s Oviedo Project. In total, this project aims to translate all four volumes of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s 16th-century Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas – y tierra firme del mar océano into English for the first time. By doing so, we seek to make this source more accessible for research, as it contains pivotal information on the colonization of the Caribbean, Mexico, and Latin America.

The work is also notable for being a translation largely undertaken by undergraduates. As a class during the academic year, the Oviedo Project guides Vassar students through the independent translation of one to two chapters. My job for the summer was to help prepare these students’ translations of Volumes I and II for publication.

Annotations

For the first half of the summer, I worked primarily on annotating Volume II. The annotations will help current students and researchers better understand the text by explaining terminology, names, and places that would have been known to a 16th-century audience.

As part of this research, I was also in communication with several archives, including some in Spain, and heavily utilized the Vassar Library collection. 

Index

The second half of the summer took an unexpected turn. Volume I, currently in the works for publication, ended up exceeding the 1150-page limit that the publisher could print. So, the publisher reformatted it to fit within this boundary. However, this pagination issue meant that all the entries in the book’s 52-page index were suddenly incorrect. Given the purpose of this translation for helping in research, an accurate index is vital. Therefore, I spent the later half of the summer rewriting the index in Volume I, as well as continuing to annotate Volume II.