One of the slides from the engineering group addressed their setbacks, but the moral of the story is that they stuck with their ambitious project and found success
MONMOUTH, ILLINOIS (August 20, 2025) A three-week start on their peers has given the students who participated in Monmouth College's Summer Opportunity for Intellectual Activity — better known as SOFIA — a good idea of what to expect when their first college classes officially begin this week.
Throughout late July and early August, the first-year students — along with their student mentors — made presentations about their research projects in the Pattee Auditorium of the Center for Science and Business. The experience, which was overseen by a group of Monmouth professors, was capped by a poster presentation on move-in/matriculation day, also held in the CSB.
Learning is hard
The students who researched "Inter-generational Communication and Gender Norms" — along the way learning about autoethnography, which included completing a "River of Life" exercise — capped their Pattee presentation by revealing the academic tips they'd acquired in their time on campus.
"Always keep revising," said Emily Perez-Castillo of Chicago. "Don't suffer in silence," said Dakota Dalton of Wright City, Missouri, referring to the support that can be found through communicating with other students and with Monmouth's very accessible faculty. With classes beginning August 20, resources such as the Writing Center and other academic support initiatives will soon be up and running.
Added Samantha Peterson of Ankeny, Iowa, "Discomfort is a crucial part of learning."
The classics group, which included Logan Serpette (far right) constructed a catapult as part of their exploration of ancient technology
Shaking their heads in agreement were members of the "Harnessing Solar Power" group. Their attempt to create a device that can be coded to water plants, using the power from solar energy, was easier said than done.
"We definitely had a lot of failures," said Addison Luna of Richview, Illinois. "We couldn't get it to work for hours. We had to take a break and come back to it."
"It was grammar errors in the coding, mostly," said her research teammate, Sophia Kern of Abingdon, Illinois.
Nevertheless, the group successfully created a prototype of the device, and they learned their way around campus in the process.
"It's been extremely helpful getting to know the campus with only 75 or so students around," said Luna.
Added Kern, "I've gotten to know the campus really well and made a lot of friends."
Learning is fun
The SOFIA students had fun along the way, including the games created by the group who tackled "Exploring the Metaverse: Virtual Worlds and the Future of Reality."
During his college search process, one of that group's participants, Gavin Streets Wood of Morrison, Illinois, got to know one of SOFIA's co-coordinators, Chris Fasano, a physics professor who oversees the academic initiative alongside chemistry professor Laura Moore.
"Back in April during the 'Make It Monmouth' event, I had already accepted the offer to go to Monmouth, but I didn't have any hope yet for it," said Streets Wood. "I was there seeking some more certainty on my choice, [and] I wasn't disappointed. I talked with Professor Fasano, and that one conversation gave me more confidence than my other previous options."
Another group did "Worm Hunting" at the Monmouth College Educational Farm and Garden, as well as in the compost pile at faculty member Jen Braun's home. Their professor, Janet Ugolino, is a proponent of the nematode C elegans as a model organism, so the research group went with a motto of searching for "America's Next Top Model. . . Organism."
One of their conclusions, after hours spent digging up worms: "It could still be out there, waiting to be discovered."
All jokes aside, the students did a thorough investigation of the species they found, including sending DNA samples to Azenta Life Sciences for genome sequencing.
After one of their Friday presentation sessions, the SOFIA students gathered for this photo outside Monmouth's Center for Science and Business
That's an example of some concrete outcomes from the research, and a potential outcome could be the creation of an outdoor society at the college. That's the goal of the students in the "Mind, Body, and Sole" group, which advocated for athletics and physical activity as a way to reduce stress and depression.
The group that studied "Where Science Meets Fiction" entered their presentation to the song "Who are You?," appropriate for their investigation of "the CSI effect," the phenomenon where TV shows depicting forensic science influence jurors' expectations in criminal trials, potentially leading to unrealistic demands for forensic evidence and affecting conviction rates.
Several of the projects continued SOFIA work that previous students had undertaken, including "The Chemistry of Baking" and "Ancient Technology and Engineering." Among other engineering feats, the latter group studied the long-lasting concrete from ancient times, and one of the products they completed was a catapult that launched a tennis ball.
It will take more than a catapult for "Planetary Defense," which was the topic another group tackled. Rather, kinetic impactors, and laser ablation were two of the solutions they studied for preventing an asteroid from making it all the way to Earth's surface.
