Midweek Musings
In this Issue:
- Student reflection on the Wake Washington semester
- NASA grant offers Wake Forest students an opportunity to help develop new tools to understand gravity
- Project Slam 2026 – faculty research in 4 minutes
- Care packages for finals week
Today’s Daily Deac shares insights on the student learning experience as well as some of the current research of our very talented faculty. And as we think about learning and end-of-semester finals, we have a way for families to send a care package to their students.
Let’s get right to it…
Student reflection on the Wake Washington semester
A cohort of students is spending the semester in Washington, DC with the Wake Washington program. During the week, students have an internship, and take classes in the evening and have some weekend events. It is a great program that combines both real work work experience with academic credit. One of the current cohort, Grace Taylor (’28), shared her perspective in a recent blog. Here is a snippet:
“On my first day of work at PBI [The Pro Bono Institute], I hopped off the Metro at Farragut Square, walked to my office building nearly a block away from the White House, and was immediately thrown into the world of pro bono legal work in D.C. As a pre-law student interested in the public sector, Washington is the perfect place for this type of exposure….In the first month of working at PBI, I have had the opportunity to contribute to this mission of expanding access to civil legal services firsthand, researching pro bono opportunities across the country, sitting in on legal clinics, and writing updates on Community Justice Worker programs in the courts….
Beyond the workday, learning continues through classes and networking events right at the Wake Washington Center in the heart of Dupont Circle. Our coursework in geopolitics and geoeconomics could not be more topical to the world, and city, we currently live in. A moment that left me speechless in this way was missing my train one afternoon after the Chinese president Xi Jinping’s official diplomatic motorcade blocked the street between me and my metro station. There’s no doubt that following domestic and international news developments feels all the more real when it happens right in front of you.”
You can read Grace’s full blog post here. I have said this many times before, but the Wake Washington internship semester (as well as the new Wake Charlotte internship semester) can give students real a competitive advantage in their ultimate job search, because they build a full semester’s worth of internship experience, as well as maturity in navigating a new city independently.
NASA grant offers Wake Forest students an opportunity to help develop new tools to understand gravity
This popped into my Inbox yesterday and wanted to share it:
“NASA has awarded Assistant Professor of Physics Alejandro Cárdenas-Avendaño a two-year, $374,000 grant to advance data analysis capabilities for the anticipated launch of NASA’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) in 2035—the world’s first space-based gravitational wave observatory.
Detecting and analyzing gravitational waves offers a new window into observing and understanding our universe.
The grant will allow Wake Forest students to “serve as the primary drivers of the research, receiving hands-on mentorship,” said Cárdenas-Avendaño, adding that the funding will help support two full-time graduate students, Lennox Keeble and Edoardo Levati, and at least two summer undergraduate researchers.”
This is really exciting news for physics students who might like to be involved with this sort of research. Read the full story.
Project Slam 2026 – faculty research in four minutes
Want to take a peek at some of the research our talented faculty are doing across the university? See the video on Project Slam 2026. Here’s the background:
“Explaining your research in four minutes is no small task.
Six Wake Forest faculty took on the challenge at this year’s Project Slam, part of the annual Research & Scholarship Celebration, sharing their work on everything from Arctic microbes to keeping humans in control of AI.”
Care packages for finals week
My colleagues in Residence Life and Housing wanted to share this opportunity with our families:
“Finals week will be here before we know it, and your students will be wrapping up a busy semester filled with hard work, late nights, and lots of learning. As they prepare for exams and final projects, a little encouragement from home can go a long way. You can order a Fall Finals Care Package to send them a little end-of-semester TLC. Be sure to order by November 7.”
Every student appreciates a little treat during finals week 🙂