Mountaintop

“I think that, long after their graduation, the students from my Mountaintop group will fit into any organization that requires this kind of creative interaction.” —Murray Itzkowitz, department chair and professor of biological sciences and mentor to Zachary Carroll ’16 (shown) of the endangered pupfish research project

Lehigh University is working to transformthe landscape of higher education to prepare students for the 21st century.

From those first few dozen students to the hundreds who participated in the initiative during the summer of 2015, one thing is certain: scholars are thriving in an ungraded environment where they can think freely, take risks, work with others, and have the opportunity to fail and try again.

Eager and working hard, Lehigh students often start with a drive to change the world. Their Mountaintop projects have taken some of them, literally, to other hemispheres for research and others, figuratively, to another planet. Their efforts have touched local and global concerns in education, health, the environment, sustainable living, and more.

At Mountaintop, undergraduate and graduate students work together and pool their knowledge from different disciplines. Faculty mentor these excited minds, rather than lead or lecture. This is the environment where open-ended discovery is the syllabus.

In 2013, the doors to a cavernous, raw, and unkept facility opened and gave space for a new idea to take root at Mountaintop.

Focusing on Improving Healthcare for HIV patientsKathryn Kundrod ’15 is one of five recent graduates who have won a national competition for designing a diagnostic device that aims to enable patients with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) to determine whether their medication is working. The prize included a $20,000 award.

In future stages of development, the Viral Diagnostic Technology device could allow patients to monitor their HIV medication and determine if it is decreasing the amount of the HIV virus in the bloodstream. The device is expected to work in under an hour and is intended particularly for patients who live in remote areas without easy access to medical laboratories and clinics.

Because of your generosity, Kundrod (shown holding the microfluidic testing device) was able to work this past summer on the technology in LaunchBayC, a 10-week student idea accelerator program embedded in the Mountaintop initiative.

“I would love to design medical devices. I eventually want to get into robotics. The Exoskeleton Project made me really interested in neuroplasticity, and I think by combining this concept with the robotic field, we can improve a wide variety of medical conditions.” — Elena Ramirez ’15, bioengineering

Student Participants+ 130 since 2013

174

Research Projects+ 29 since 2013

37

Majors ParticipatingIncreased 100% since 2013

44

Faculty Mentors+ 48 since 2013

58

Because of you, this new concept in education that puts the emphasis on student-driven research, where ambiguity is not only accepted but celebrated, has been able to flourish. Your support has allowed more students to participate in projects that can really make a difference. Without your generosity to the Mountaintop initiative, the attempting, discovering, and project breakthroughs would have never happened. Thank you.

Mountaintop 2015

Building Geometric KnowledgeBringing technology and basic learning together, an app was developed to replicate a child’s 3-D block-building experience — without using actual blocks. The app for tablets and mobile devices is planned to expose more children to geometric solids, which are essential in developing spatial knowledge — key skills related to STEM fields.

Creating Better Buildings for SenegalAiming to improve West African homes, students built a quarter-scale model of a traditional Senegalese cinder block home and conducted research that included finding ways to improve ventilation while preventing malaria-bearing mosquitoes from entering.

The next phase of this project involves students returning to Senegal to field test their findings with Senegalese builders and homeowners. This is projected to take place in 2016-17.

Saving the Endangered PupfishContinuing the preservation efforts to save the endangered Leon Springs Desert Pupfish native to Texas, students replicated the pupfish’s environment at Mountaintop and conducted research on the closely related and abundant Sheepshead Minnow.

Developing In-School and After-School Tutoring SupportUsing campus and community resources, students built a portfolio of creative arts-based learning activities for use with local elementary and middle school students by homework tutors and classroom teachers.

From Mountaintop to Mars: Developing an Extra-Terrestrial GreenhouseContemplating Martian obstacles such as UV radiation, meteorite impacts, and dust storms, engineering students worked to design a greenhouse concept that could be further developed for use on the red planet. Such a structure could provide a food source to sustain future travelers.

Interest for this project originated from team member Kevin Augustyn ’17 who read about NASA’s research and obstacles on the subject and thought “we could help expand the information available to [NASA] and possibly come up with a solution to the issues they’ve been having.”

2015 PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS▶

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In October, hundreds of audience members participated in the culmination of a summer Mountaintop project that allowed viewers to use technology to interact with the choral piece performed by the Lehigh University Choir. Composed by Steven Sametz, Ronald J. Ulrich Professor of Music and director of Lehigh University Choral Arts, the Founder’s Day Performance Experience Project team worked to make the piece, titled Darest Thou Now, O Soul, interactive to create a sense of community during the performance.

To enable audience participation, the team created a website accessible by cell phone during the performance. Viewers were asked to measure their level of engagement with the music by selecting a symbol on the webpage that represented how the music made them feel. The responses were collected and instantly transformed the colors of a light sculpture the team crafted. The responses also affected the electronic enhancement applied to the choir’s live sound, to which the audience then responded. The audience’s choices helped determine the sound and direction of the work as it happened.

Founder’s Day Performance Experience Project

In the project design, the team of undergraduate and graduate students used components of astrophysics, neurobiology, cognitive science, computer science, computer engineering, and the humanities.

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Connor Tench ’15 — Three-Time Mountaintop Student Having participated in Lehigh University’s Mountaintop Experiences since the start has made Connor Tench think that “people who go through Mountaintop will come out of it with a much better sense of ‘what do I do if something isn’t working?’”

Tench learned first-hand what to do while working on the Smart Spaces project during the summers of 2013 and 2014 and being the lead app developer for the Founder’s Day Performance Experience Project during Mountaintop 2015.

“I have never been more challenged by a project or research than I have in doing the work I have done at Mountaintop,” said Tench. “This was my first encounter of conducting research where I had to bang my head against the wall for a couple days, which then lead me to introduce myself to new concepts or new material. I wouldn’t have found that ability to fail, and get back up again and again, in a classroom or other setting.”

Tench earned a bachelor of science degree in computer science and is continuing his education at Lehigh as a Presidential Scholar, conducting research in medical imaging technology.

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“I have never been more challenged by a project or research than I have in doing the work I have done at Mountaintop.”

“I have never been more challenged by a project or research than I have in doing the work I have done at Mountaintop.” —Connor Tench ’15 shown with (from left) Trevor Davis ’15 ’16 and Tyler Seip ’14 ’15G assembling the Founder’s Day Performance Experience light sculpture in Mountaintop Building C2

Written Summer 2015