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TCNJ students study everything under the sun during Mentored Undergraduate Summer Experience

Summer was hot with research at TCNJ. Throughout June and July, 92 students and 45 faculty members worked on 53 projects as part of TCNJ’s Mentored Undergraduate Summer Experience, known as MUSE.

The eight-week experience gives students the opportunity to conduct research or engage in creative activity in collaboration with TCNJ faculty members in all academic disciplines.

Here is a small sampling of some of their work:

Professor Figueroa works with Shayaan Makki and Sahir Tehseen on their MUSE project, modeling how green facades can affect building temperatures.
Professor Figueroa works with Shayaan Makki and Sahir Tehseen on their MUSE project modeling how green facades can affect building temperatures.

PROJECT Modeling the Effects of Vertical Green Walls on Thermal Regulation in TCNJ Dormitories
FACULTY Manuel Figueroa, integrative STEM education
STUDENTS Shayaan Makki ’26 and Sahir Tehseen ’26, biology majors

GOING GREEN Green façades — vertical walls either partially or completely covered with growing plants — are gaining popularity as an economical, environmentally friendly, and aesthetically pleasing way to increase energy efficiency in buildings. Student researchers Makki and Tehseen hypothesized that growing a trellis of vertical vines could be a useful way to help regulate temperatures in some of the campus residence halls while adding greenery and serving as a conversation piece.

They built three, four-foot-tall models of a dorm room, each equipped with sensors, that they’re using to collect their data. They’ll compare temperature differences between models equipped with a green façade of varying amounts of foliage and those without.

 A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS With an assist from colleagues in the physics department, Figueroa’s team used a drone equipped with a thermal camera to create thermal profiles of the residence halls. “We can already see how vegetation and shade affect temperatures around the building,” he says. The green façades can make a 2–10 degree (Celsius) difference in the building’s interior temperature — warmer in the cooler weather and cooler in the summer months. 

POTENTIAL PITFALL? Makki and Tehseen specifically chose animal-resistant foliage, but Figueroa says, “I have to tell you, I think a deer was snacking on one of our vines.”


PROJECT Making Microbiological Phenomena Visible
FACULTY Sorraya Brashear-Evans ’16, design and creative technology
STUDENT Olivia Stark ’25 and Sammie Zhu ’25, interactive multimedia majors

KEEPING CLEAN: This trio partnered with corporate client Colgate-Palmolive to visualize microbiological phenomena in hygiene education.

SHOWING OFF: After eight weeks of researching, writing, and storyboarding, Stark and Zhu designed and developed an engaging and educational animated short video illustrating the body’s microbiome — the community of bacteria, viruses, and fungi that live on each of us and support our body’s processes and overall health — and the importance of properly caring for it. They presented their work at the Colgate-Palmolive facility in Piscataway, New Jersey.

FACT: Project mentor and alum Brashear-Evans won an Emmy award for her animation work on CBS New York’s 2019 anniversary coverage of 9/11.


PROJECT Becoming a teacher: How do first-generation college students choose to pursue majors in Education?
FACULTY Nadya Pancsofar, special education, language, and literacy
STUDENT Lisa Falvey ’26, history major, and Christian Perez ’28, communication studies major

WHAT THEY’RE UP TO Analyzing interviews with first-generation college students who chose to pursue majors in education. The goal is to identify pathways toward recruiting first-gen students into teaching fields and create a more representative and robust teacher workforce.

END GAME The team is applying the community cultural wealth theory — a model that examines the talents, strengths, and experiences that students of color bring to college — to identify the ways in which first-generation students arrive in the education field. “Some students say that they discovered a passion for teaching during a job experience, like being a tutor in high school,” Pancsofar says.


PROJECT Design of a Solar-Powered Frost Prevention Device
FACULTY Ardeshir Tabrizi, mechanical engineering
STUDENT Leah Sklar ’27, mechanical engineering

FROST ADVISORY Spring brings new life after a long winter, but dramatic temperature dips in the season’s early months can cause frost damage to budding fruit trees. While existing methods to heat the buds are effective, Sklar says they’re energy-intensive and often environmentally damaging. They’re working with a local farm to change that.

“This farmer loses hours of sleep during frost events, manually using a flame gun on his tractor to protect the trees,” Sklar says. “This method is both inefficient and relies on fossil fuels.”

WARMING UP This student-faculty pair is testing a proof of concept that uses solar power to heat and circulate water through outdoor pipes that provide radiant heat to protect crops from frost damage.

“This eco-friendly solution integrates principles of heat transfer and thermodynamics, along with practical skills in woodworking and machining, to demonstrate a new application of hydronic radiant heating,” Sklar says.

IT’S AUTOMATIC The system they’re developing would eliminate the need for labor-intensive processes and provide more reliable frost protection, saving the farmer time and reducing negative environmental impacts.

 

Interested in getting involved? Get more info on the MUSE website.


— Emily W. Dodd ’03

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