Wrapping up summer research (Summer 2025) (#1359)

Topics/tags: Academia, disjoint

Yesterday was the last day of my summer 2025 student-faculty research project. As is the case in most years, the project mostly went well. And, as is the case i most years, I’m sad to wrap up summer research. My muse says I should write about summer research, focusing more on broad issues than the particular project.

Full-time large-group summer research projects are amongst my favorite teaching activities. Admittedly, I have many favorite teaching activities. I love teaching CSC-151, Functional Problem Solving, because I get to introduce students to the wonder of computational thinking, I get to use Scheme, and, at least lately, I get to play with image making. I love teaching CSC-207, Object-Oriented Problem Solving, Data Structures, and Algorithms, because it’s when students first delve more deeply into the wonders of computer science, in terms of building larger software projects as well as designing, implementing, and analyzing algorithms and data structures. I love teaching CSC-301, Algorithm Analysis, because algorithm design is one of my favorite parts of CS; algorithms and data structures are at the core of computational thinking. I used to love teaching the now-discontinued CSC-362, Compilers, because the course ties together so many areas of CS. I love teaching Tutorial because it’s outside my core discipline, I get to explore new ideas, and I usually meet a broader variety of students than I get in my CS classes.

In any case, summer research is an awesome experience. Students discover that they can accomplish great things and advance knowledge, particularly when they can work on such activities full time. I find the experience particularly valuable for our second tier students, who learn that they can do incredibly well when they are not comparing themselves to others. In making my hiring decisions, I don’t necessarily emphasize such students; in many years, some of the top students naturally got stolen away to REUs, internships, and other opportunities. I suppose that even happened this summer; I just managed to steal at least one of them back. And, in many years, I can hire top students who don’t necessarily realize they are top students.

I’m at the stage in which I no longer need to publish to be successful. Nonetheless, I have useful ideas [1] that should be shared with my research community. I’m glad that this year’s students were able to make the ideas their own and to write up the work for conference submission. I think I mentioned that they did a particularly good job writing their papers this year: I had to edit their work and add a bit, but I didn’t write as much as I usually do when working with students.

I enjoy summer research for other reasons, too. Another important one is that I get to know the students better than I usually do in standard course experiences. Being together for at least a few hours a day, on average, builds closer connections. I also tend to do community-building activities for the lab (and, at times, the whole department) over the summer, including weekly lab lunches. It’s fun to build relationships with the wonderful students who come to Grinnell [2].

The broader activities also bring joy to my life. I enjoy running game nights over the summer. I don’t think they’d work as well during the year; there’s a much bigger cohort of students available, and there’s already a board-game club on campus. Maybe we can have a few card nights; there are certainly a variety of card games we had fun playing or that I think we’d have fun playing: Continental [3], Euchre, Canasta, perhaps even Coup d’Etat. Would The Great Dalmuti count? I’m not sure. I also have way too many Pairs decks [4], so we could consider some of those (or even write our own).

This summer was atypical in many ways. I had less mental and physical energy than usual, and I scheduled multiple early-summer workshops, so my students were forced to be more independent than they commonly are. Most of the group appreciated that independence. I also don’t mean to imply that my other groups weren’t independent; for example, the summer camp groups designed multiple curricula. However, I tended to give more regular feedback for those groups. This summer may also be the first in which I didn’t force students to rotate between subgroups. In any case, the individual exit interviews suggest that even though my lower-than-normal contributions and availability were not planned, they had more of a positive impact than a negative one.

I also appreciate that what I typically claim about my large summer research teams held: Students became experts in various parts of their projects and were able to share that expertise not only within their subproject, but also with the other projects. From my perspective, that’s another outcome of summer work, and it generally only happens with larger teams. When teams are smaller, students expect that I’ll serve as the primary resource; when teams are larger, they realize that they should be resources for each other.

Unfortunately, as I implied earlier, this summer’s approach was not ideal for all of the research students. I apologize to those who I could have served better.

Is that it? I think so. I suppose I could have provided more background about Grinnell’s student-faculty research program, particularly the funding for summer research. I might have complained about the form I need to fill out at the end of the summer for each summer research student. Perhaps those can be topics for future musings. Perhaps I’ve written them already [5].

Thanks again to my students for making it a great summer!

[1] At least I think they’re useful.

[2] I should check that old promotional video for what adjective I used for Grinnell students.

[3] We never came close to finishing a game of Continental.

[4] Perhaps I have just enough Pairs decks, particularly if I’m going to run a spring independent on board game design.

[5] The end-of-summer student evaluation form changed recently, so a past musing may no longer be as relevant.

Version 1.0 of 2025-08-02.