William & Mary Inquiry

Yes, Rave and Research Do Mix Well
Elizabeth Harbron has an automatic advantage over her colleagues in the chemistry department when it comes to recruiting students into their research labs: she works with chemicals that change color, light up and glow.

Hands-On Research of Hand-Written Experiences
When the Spanish archivist Peio Monteano produced a 13th-century ceremonial on the coronation of English kings, Kimberly Bassett knew that this was an opportunity few other researchers – let alone undergraduates – ever get.

What an Honor(arium)!
Undergraduate students who participate in research participate in poster sessions fairly often. Less often, but still pretty frequently, undergrad researchers present their findings during presentations at a professional conference convention. What's really rare - for an undergraduate - is being invited to present and then rewarded with an honorarium.

Research, for Real
Real scientists wouldn't be caught dead with cookbook-style lab instructions ('Two tablespoons of baking soda plus two cups of vinegar equals foamy fun!').

Cross-Cultural (and Accidental) Encounters
Why William and Mary? That's a question Celine Carayon, a French graduate student studying U.S. history, gets asked all the time. "They say, 'you're from Europe--that's where the history is,'" says Carayon.

Of the Bard and Barf Jokes
William & Mary students have never met a stage they didn't like. The very first theater in America was built in Williamsburg in 1716, and in 1736, a group of William & Mary students put on the first student play in the colonies.

King Kong Eats College Town
There's more to Williamsburg's history than fifes and three-cornered hats. The William & Mary community celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Kimball Theatre (formerly the Williamsburg Theatre), an old-fashioned single-screen beauty right in the heart of Duke of Gloucester (DoG) Street.

Winged Mercury
If you like to fish, you may or may not know that there are hundreds - no, thousands - of lakes and rivers in the U.S. holding fish that are too contaminated to eat safely.

A Hazard without Borders
What do the Han River in China, gold mines in Ecuador, and swallows in the Shenandoah Valley have in common? All three are research projects focusing on mercury contamination.