Belmont Summer Scholars
Belmont Undergrads have the opportunity to do research for credit during the summer through a program called Belmont Summer Scholars. Here, students work part-time (about 20-30 hours) for 6-8 weeks on a research project with faculty participating in the program. One of the major benefits of the program is that you only pay for 2 hours of credit but get 4 hours of credit in the process. Finally, if your major requires research and if you meet the requirements to take the research course, this program could cover the research requirement.
Participants in Summer Scholars have the option of participating in the research seminars and social activities occurring during the summer and can also present their research at the fall poster session. We generally know which faculty chose to participate in Summer Scholars around the winter break. Feel free to reach out to your advisor or Beth Bowman if you would like more information!
Financial Aid for the Summer
Scholars is a fantastic opportunity to get research experience at 1/2 price tuition. Still, at this discount, it is important to know how any financial aid might support this cost. There are several factors that go into summer aid and the best support you can get is to complete the Summer Aid Form: https://www.belmont.edu/sfs/forms.html. To complete the form, click on the Maymester & Summer Forms link.
Generally, most students have to be enrolled for 6 or more hours in the summer to receive federal aid. Some students receiving Pell grant funds might be eligible to use that and/or their Hope scholarship in the summer. If this research course is not within your program of study, you may not be able to use any type of aid. However, reaching out to Financial Aid is the best way to know the support you can receive.
Summer Scholars 2026 Faculty
If you are interested in participating in Scholars, please reach out to the faculty of interest to you to learn about the research available to you and what they are looking for in students.
Biology
Analyzing selective mRNA export from the nucleus in yeast.
My lab uses a combination of molecular (playing with DNA in a test tube, including molecular cloning and CRISPR), microbiological (playing with bacteria and yeast using aseptic technique), and bioinformatic (using computers to analyze DNA sequences) to explore the fundamental process of how mRNA moves from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. This involves my favorite cell structure: nuclear pore complexes, large doorways embedded in the nuclear envelope, as well as a host of other proteins that mediate the process. Looking forward to talking science with you! :)
Special Skills Taught: Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Bioinformatics
Important Information for Participants: An Introduction to Biology (Principles I Lecture and Lab)
Time commitment: 4 hours credit, 6 weeks (May 26-July 2), ~30 hr/week
Email me: rebecca.adams@belmont.edu
Environmental Assessment of Nashville’s Waters & Communities
Summer research with me could look like surveying fish and bugs in a local creek to identify patterns of growth, reproduction, or disease, or surveying people to identify ways they relate to their local environments around Nashville! Either way, you will get a chance to help design your own research project with relevant questions focused on the environment. You will get a chance to go outside and get dirty, but also do some lab work and data analysis. Examples of previous research with students includes: identifying microplastics in fish and sediments of local streams, monitoring changes in fish respiration under climate change scenarios, surveying resident perceptions of urban green space values, identifying liver abnormalities in stream fish for sub-lethal effects, and surveying students to identify water quality perceptions and behaviors.
Special Skills Taught: field work, data analysis, hydrology, ichthyology, aquatic entomology, statistics, human dimensions and survey design
Important Information for Participants: An Introduction to Biology (Principles I Lecture and Lab)
Time commitment: 4 credit hours, Summer Session I, ~30 hr/week
Email me: ross.andrew@belmont.edu
Using DNA sequencing technology to catalog bacterial communities along the Cumberland River
I’m a trained cancer biologist and have, historically, worked to better understand pathways that regulate cancer cell growth. Most recently, I’ve really enjoyed finding ways to use my molecular expertise in other biological research fields. This summer I’ll be working collaboratively with Dr. Matt Heard, an Environmental Scientist, who plans to examine multiple aspects of water quality along the Cumberland River. We will be using a metagenomic 16S sequencing approach to better understand the vast bacterial communities that exist in different areas of the river. This collaborative project will help us understand how humans and other organisms might be affected by the bacterial makeup along the river, and also how various environmental factors might influence the makeup of microbial communities.
Special Skills Taught: Molecular biology, DNA sequencing, Environmental sample collection
Important Information for Participants: An Introduction to Biology (Principles I Lecture and Lab)
Time commitment: 4 hours credit, Summer Session I, ~30 hr/week
Email me: chris.barton@belmont.edu
Understanding The Impacts of Humans On The Environment
I'm an environmental scientist and ecologist and work to understand the impacts humans have on the environment. This summer, I'm doing a collaborative project with Dr. Chris Barton (biology) looking at the health and ecological integrity of the Cumberland River here in Nashville. For this project, we'll be combining field work and lab work and using some cutting edge molecular techniques to understand how the bacterial communities present in the Cumberland River are changing over time. This work is super exciting and has relevance to people interested in public health, ecology, environmental science, and molecular biology!
Special Skills Taught: field work, lab work, ecology, data analysis, statistics, molecular biology, microbiology
Important Information for Participants: An Introduction to Biology (Principles I Lecture and Lab)
Time commitment: 4 hours credit, Summer Session I, ~30 hr/week
Email me: matthew.heard@belmont.edu
Functional Physiology of Animals
My work focuses on how animal structure (ie bones, muscles, and shape) affect their function in a given environment or under varying physiological conditions. I work on a wide range on animals including frogs, fish, turtles, lizards, and insects. In my lab, you will have the opportunity to work with local researchers at Nashville Zoo, Vanderbilt, and Metro Parks conducting lab or field based research. Previous work in my lab has studied, insect flight, infectious diseases in amphibians, muscular anatomy, and locomotor performance. Skills you can learn include advanced dissection techniques, high speed camera analysis, biomechanics, animal husbandry, and field techniques.
Special Skills Taught: Dissections, high speed camera work, animal husbandry, field collection techniques, Electromyography
Important Information for Participants: physiology classes may be helpful but not necessary!
Time commitment: 4 hours credit, 6 weeks (ideally, May 26-July 2), ~30 hr/week
Email me: chase.kinsey@belmont.edu
Chemistry/Physics
1) Synthesis organic materials/monomer for proton exchange membrane; 2) Organic nanoparticles for cancer research
A series of diazonium (perfluoroalkyl)aryl sulfonylimide (PFSI) zwitterionic monomers are planned to be synthesized. These partially fluorinated monomers, containing trifluorovinyl ether and diazonium groups, are designed for polymerization and covalent bonding to carbon electrodes in proton exchange membrane fuel cells.
The 2nd project's goal is to develop theranostic nanoparticles (NPs) that enhance cancer diagnosis and targeted therapy. By combining CDs, FA, and anticancer drugs, these NPs aim to detect early-stage cancer and selectively treat tumor cells.
Special Skills Taught: organic lab synthesis skills, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Infrared Spectroscopy，Ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy, Fluorometer
Important Information for Participants: Organic lecture and lab is required
Time commitment: 4 hours credit, 6-8 weeks (flexible), ~20-30 hr/week
Email me: hua.mei@belmont.edu
Math/Computer Science
Uncovering how and why AI agents fail
This project will investigate the characteristics of Agentic Pull Requests (Agentic-PRs) authored by AI coding agents across thousands of real-world GitHub repositories. Using the AIDev dataset, which encompasses over 930,000 PRs generated by tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, Devin, GitHub Copilot, and OpenAI Codex, we will examine how these AI systems modify code, the nature of their contributions, and their consistency with accompanying descriptions. The analysis aims to uncover whether AI-generated patches tend to reuse or create new code and what this means for long-term maintainability. Ultimately, the study provides an empirical foundation for understanding how AI agents shape modern software development practices at scale.
Special Skills Taught: Natural Language processing, statistics, code writing, paper writing
Important Information for Students: Programing 2 prefered, minimal Programming I
Time commitment: 4 hours credit, 6 weeks (May 26-July 2), ~30 hr/week
Email me: esteban.parrarodriguez@belmont.edu
Neuroscience/Psychology
Social and Individual Determinants of Psychological and Physical Health
The specific project conducted will depend on the interests of the Summer Scholars students. We will use survey research to examine the influence of social/environmental (e.g., relationships, stress) and individual (e.g., personality, sense of self) factors on psychological and/or physical health outcomes (e.g., sleep quality, anxiety, depression, life satisfaction). Students will create a study and develop surveys, collect data from participants, and conduct statistical analyses to test their hypotheses.
Special Skills Taught: Survey construction (using Qualtrics), data collection (using Prolific online platform), running and interpreting results of statistical analyses (using SPSS)
Time commitment: 4 hours credit, Ideal dates would be SURFS dates (May 26-July2), but I'm open to being flexible as students may have different needs., ~30 hr/week
Email me: abigail.heller@belmont.edu
Psychology of Body Image, Objectification, and Gender
This project will involve designing and conducting an online data collection examining how body image, objectification, identity, and gender influence the educational, physical, and social/emotional outcomes of adults (18+ year olds). Students will learn to develop research questions and hypotheses related to variables that interest them and design/conduct a study testing these hypotheses. After data collection is complete, students will learn how to select the appropriate statistical analyses and how to conduct them in SPSS or R. Finally, students will learn how to present their research for a conference-type setting. This project is flexible and easily adaptable to students’ specific interests!
Special Skills Taught: Literature review, study/hypothesis development, Data collection using Qualtrics/Prolific, Data Analysis in SPSS and R, presenting research
Time commitment: 4 hours credit, 6 weeks (May 26-July 2), ~30 hr/week
Email me: jessica.hocking@belmont.edu
Purpose in a Changing World: What Drives Us Now?
Special Skills Taught: understanding research, survey design and analysis
Time commitment: 4 hours credit, 6 weeks (May 26-July 2), ~30 hr/week
Email me: dustin.keller@belmont.edu
Brain wave Activity and Cognitive Performance
In this work, we will explore the neurophysiological underpinnings of individual differences in cognitive performance. We will use electroencephalography (EEG) to assess brain wave activity in response to various cognitive stimuli. Cognitive domains explored include: memory, attention, language, visuospatial navigation, and more.
Special Skills Taught: EEG net application, EEG experiment setup, ERP data processing, coding, etc.
Time commitment: 4 hours credit, 6 weeks (May 26-July 2), ~30 hr/week
Email me: michael.oliver@belmont.edu
Investigating the Impact of drug exposure on zebrafish embryonic development
This summer, we will study how different chemical compounds affect zebrafish development using mutant (cryaa⁻/⁻ or cryaba⁻/⁻) and transgenic lines such as TG(kdrl:GFP) and TG(gfap:GFP) to visualize vascular and glial responses during early development. Embryos will be treated with various drug concentrations to examine changes in morphology, heartbeat, and fluorescence expression. Through this project, we aim to understand developmental toxicity and build strong experimental and analytical skills.
Special Skills Taught: Animal Handling, Drug Preparation and Treatment, Data Analysis, Bright and Fluorescence Microscopy Techniques
Important Information for Participants: Research method, intro Neurobiogy needed
Time commitment: 4 hours credit, 6 weeks (May 26-July 2), ~30 hr/week
Email me: jinhee.park@belmont.edu
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