Horns and Feathers: The Experience of Undergraduate Research

Kinesiology professor and French horn player Dr. Peter Iltis hails from a long line of talented musicians. When a movement disorder diagnosis threatened to curtail his playing, he set out to learn all he could. Now he is using MRI to study movements inside the mouth of horn players with embouchure dystonia. He invited Rachel Burke ’17 (kinesiology major and violinist) to come alongside as his research assistant.

“I study really interesting things in kind of strange places,” jokes Dr. Greg Keller, Biology Department chair and professor of conservation biology. He worked with biology majors and fellow bird lovers Catherine Schweitzer ’16 and Lauren Purdy ’16 to research the impact of habitat changes at the “edges” on local bird populations.

During a recent convocation, these two student-faculty research teams shared with the Gordon community about their experiences in collaborative projects made possible by the Provost’s Summer Research Fellowship program. Watch the video >>