Twenty-six students participated in Phoenix Summer, held July 6-17 on Elon’s campus, where they immersed themselves in hands-on, college-style academics while fostering curiosity, community and independence.

“The transition from high school to college is one of the biggest milestones in a student’s life, and after working with first-year students for many years, I’ve learned that one of the most common things they say is ‘I wish I had known what to expect,’” said Theresa Higgins, academic coordinator for alternative start programs. “Phoenix Summer gives students the opportunity to experience college before they get here full time.”

�þ��� lived in the residence halls, navigated campus, ate in the dining hall, learned from Elon faculty, connected with staff and explored the academic and social opportunities Elon has to offer.

�þ��� selected two courses to take throughout the camp, including Order in the court!, An introduction to law and justice, taught by Shilanka Lewis, assistant professor of law; Chemistry in the kitchen, taught by Mary McManamy, associate �þ��� professor of chemistry; Exploring astronomical and poetic light, taught by Claudine Moreau, assistant �þ��� professor of physics; and Start-up Spring: concept to creation, taught by Elena Kennedy, associate professor of entrepreneurship and Dan Reis, assistant director of creative learning technologies.

“The Phoenix Summer faculty were truly the highlight of this pre-college experience,” Higgins said. “Their enthusiasm, passion and genuine engagement with their subject matter inspired students to see college as a place to explore their interests and discover new possibilities.”

Each day the students spent time learning and engaging in the classroom through a variety of hands-on lessons.

“The law class was my favorite part of the camp,” said Ava Hendricks, an eleventh grade student from Raleigh, North Carolina. “I have always been interested in law and what we have been doing in the class to prepare for a mock trial has been so cool. Phoenix Summer gave me the opportunity to picture college. I would never have known what college would be like without this possibility.”

During the day, students participated in their courses, while evenings and weekends were filled with social events, activities, several off-campus excursions and signature Elon experiences to help students build community. Activities students participated in included a trivia night, human bingo, s’more making, karaoke, a water balloon fight and a sip and paint.

“My favorite parts of the camp were meeting new people, living in a dorm and attending the classes,” said Sienna Rohan, a twelfth grade student from Greensboro, Georgia. “It’s been nice meeting new people, and I’ve learned a lot about Elon.”

Higgins’ hope is that students left the camp with not only a greater appreciation for Elon, but also a renewed excitement about the possibilities that lie ahead as the students transition from high school to college.

“The primary goal of Phoenix Summer is to provide high school students with an authentic college experience that builds confidence, independence and a sense of belonging before they begin their college journey,” Higgins said. “The most exciting part of the camp was watching the students truly thrive in the experiences we intentionally designed for them.

“I watched them blossom from students who arrived on the first day feeling nervous and uncertain about what to expect into confident, engaged learners — and, in the case of our Order in the Court students, budding lawyers in training. I hope they leave believing in themselves. Whether they ultimately choose Elon or another institution, I hope Elon will always hold a special place in their hearts as the place where they first experienced college and began to see themselves as future college students.”

For more information about Phoenix Summer and information about future camps, contact Theresa Higgins, academic coordinator for alternative start programs, at thiggings7@elon.edu.

The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi currently awards 40 Fellowships of $8,500 each, six at $15,000 each and two at $35,000 each to members entering the first year of graduate or professional study. Each active Phi Kappa Phi chapter may select one candidate from among its local applicants to compete for the Society-wide awards.

Established in 1932, the annually provides funding to first-year graduate students who are pursuing post-baccalaureate degrees across all academic disciplines. Endorsed by their local chapter, Phi Kappa Phi Fellows go on to study at some of the nation’s top graduate schools.

While at Elon, Fitch earned the Lumen Prize, the university’s top research award, for her research focused on commonalities between juvenile offenders who are tried as adults, including factors like age, type of offense, and race.

“The relationships with faculty and staff that I formed at Elon were a standout part of my experience,” said Fitch, who earned a degree in political science and statistics. “From classwork to advice to letters of recommendation to a connection for housing during law school, my many faculty and staff mentors gave so much so freely. I am deeply grateful to all of them and to Elon for making it possible for me to build these incredible connections.”

Fitch’s work as a direct support professional, providing in-home care for an adult with disabilities, also helped inspire her future law career. She continued working with disabled individuals at Elon, through work with the It Takes a Village Project, Elon Buddies and Peacehaven Community Farm.

“Through this difficult but deeply rewarding work, I have gained a much deeper understanding of the immense effort and knowledge required to navigate the systems that are intended to support disabled people and their families,” she said. “This has inspired me to pursue a career path in estate planning with a focus on special needs trusts.”

April Post, president of Elon’s Phi Kappa Phi chapter and associate �þ��� professor of Spanish, says it’s Fitch’s scholarship and commitment to serving others that set her apart.

“The Phi Kappa Phi Fellowship recognizes students whose achievements and potential place them among the nation’s most promising future leaders, and Mira embodies those qualities in every aspect of her work,” Post said. “Elon’s chapter of PKP is proud to celebrate this remarkable achievement and look forward to the impact she will make through her legal career.”

Bishop is serving as a summer intern at the Office of Historic Alexandria, which oversees all the museums in Historic Alexandria. During her internship, she catalogs artifacts in the city archives, assists with citywide events and cleans museum collections. One of her biggest projects has been designing and proposing an interactive activity to accompany an exhibit at the Alexandria Black History Museum.

“Since being at this internship, I have learned how different departments in the museum environment interact with each other,” Bishop said. “I have worked with museum educators, archivists, archaeologists and directors and have seen how their roles overlap and work together. I’ve also learned practical skills like collections handling, through cleaning the collections, and archival practices.”

Bishop’s favorite part of the internship has been working with her co-intern to develop the interactive activity for the Moss Kendrix exhibit at the Alexandria Black History Museum.

“I have loved getting to apply the research processes I’ve learned in my art history and history classes at Elon to a real-world exhibition,” Bishop said.

While searching for an internship to accompany Capital Connections, a Study USA program in Washington, D.C., Bishop expanded her search beyond the city. She discovered Old Town Alexandria community-centered network of museums, preservation projects, archaeology and public programming. She jumped at the opportunity to work in a smaller office where she would get hands-on, diversified experience in several areas of museum work.

She learned about the internship through George Mason University’s database of history internships, which was recommended by Cindy Sweeney in the Student Professional Development Center.

The internship has helped Bishop explore different areas of museum work while preparing her for a future career in the field.

“This internship has exposed me to several areas of museum work that I was not previously familiar with, which has allowed me to test which parts I enjoy and want to pursue further,” Bishop said. “I will take away significant hands-on experience in the museum space and strong connections with several staff members at the Office of Historic Alexandria.”

As she enters her senior year at Elon, Bishop has developed a passion for museum education, an area she is considering pursuing in graduate school. After graduation, Bishop plans to gain professional experience before attending graduate school.

Now, that vision has become a reality.

The newly completed immersive audio room in Arts West is providing students and faculty with a high-quality environment for both �þ��� and experimentation— particularly in Dolby Atmos, the industry-standard format for three-dimensional volumetric audio, reshaping everything from cinematic sound to commercial music releases. Associate Professor of Music Todd Coleman says the need for such a space had been clear for years.

“The music department had no dedicated listening environment that was like a classroom-sized space of high quality,” he explained. “We have the built-in generic AV stereo speaker set up in our classrooms and computer lab, but those rooms cannot play back audio beyond two-channel stereo recordings, and the rooms are not acoustically treated for detailed and nuanced listening, whether in stereo or surround formats.”

Originally envisioned more than a decade ago as a small theater-style room with tiered seating, the idea was shelved due to cost. When Elon added Studio D, its Dolby Atmos mixing studio, another challenge emerged: the studio only seats four people comfortably and was designed only for mixing and mastering, not large group listening sessions.”

Coleman proposed converting an existing Arts West classroom into a dedicated immersive audio space capable of seating 20 listeners. Although the project went unfunded for several years, it finally received approval in spring 2025. Over the summer, Coleman worked with an acoustics consultant to design the layout, sound treatment and speaker placement.

“While there were certainly some limitations due to both budget and facility constraints, through the renovation project we were able to add effective acoustic treatments, mount the 12 speakers throughout the room required for immersive audio playback, and enhance the aesthetic look and feel of the room,” Coleman said.

The finished space features a 7.1.4 Atmos setup, including seven ear-level speakers, four height speakers and a subwoofer, creating what Coleman described as a “true three-dimensional space” for audio playback.

“You can make it sound like it’s behind you to the right, behind you to the left, anywhere up or down,” he said. “It is not just sound that surrounds, it is sound that you inhabit – sound that moves around you, above you, through you, even in you.”

For Anthony Hotakainen ’26, who earned a degree in music production and recording arts, the room reshaped the scope of his �þ��� research. When he toured colleges, Studio D, which includes Dolby Atmos immersive audio mixing, mastering, and music/audio post production equipment, was the feature that made Elon stand out.

His Elon Fellows project, mentored by Coleman, explored the question of whether immersive audio actually enhances storytelling in formats other than film, including music, audiobook, podcasts, etc.

Beyond research, the room has quickly become a valuable �þ��� tool. Coleman now uses it for orchestration courses, and other music faculty are using it for senior seminars and songwriting project listening sessions. There is also a new mixing class and immersive audio class that are part of the revised music production and recording arts major that will make extensive use of the new resource.”

“It’s been great to be able to play examples and just hear them clearly,” he said.

The department also hopes the room will support expanded collaboration with the School of Communications, from screening student films to exploring immersive broadcast audio for athletics.

“This room will be the best screening room we have on campus, both audio and video,” said Coleman.

For Hotakainen, the space represents exactly what drew him to Elon. “I was just pretty impressed with the faculty and the spaces here,” he said. “It just felt like home.”

Read this story and more about how Elon is “breaking through the ordinary” in the 2025 Provost’s Report

The project, “Beyond the Books,” is a life-simulation board game designed to help first-year students build the academic, social and emotional skills they need to navigate the transition to university. She has developed the game since spring 2025 through a research collaboration with Jill McSweeney, assistant director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) and assistant professor of wellness, and in partnership with faculty at the University of Iceland.

At ICED, Hollingsworth, along with Elon and Iceland colleagues, led a 90-minute interactive workshop introducing the game’s research foundations and giving 15 faculty from universities around the world the chance to play a prototype themselves. Attendees provided supportive and positive feedback on the game’s design and its potential applications at their own institutions, underscoring the project’s relevance to educational developers and faculty working with first-year students worldwide.

The presentation builds on a project that has already spanned an ocean: Hollingsworth traveled to Iceland in summer 2025 with funding from Elon’s Center for Research on Global Engagement, playtesting the game with students, faculty and staff there and adapting it to account for cultural differences between the two institutions. During Fall 2025, she and McSweeney recruited over 100 students across Elon 1010 and COR 1100 courses to play the game and participate in a semester-long research project that explored their experiences across their first college semester. This upcoming fall, students at the University of Iceland will be invited to participate in the project, playing a translated version of the game.

Ethical Agency: A Values-First Approach to Academic Development
Deandra Little and David Green
This session explored how academic developers navigate change with trust and ethical practice, balancing new initiatives with limited resources and resistance. Participants reflected on their professional identities and ethical priorities, guided by emerging ethical guidelines for educational developers. The goal was to empower participants to make intentional, sustainable decisions rooted in their core values.

Walking Besides, Not Ahead: A Mentoring Story of Shared Power
Vanessa Drew-Branch
This presentation shared a mentoring model rooted in equity and cultural responsiveness that shifts from faculty-led hierarchy to a collaborative inquiry with students. By empowering students as knowledge producers, the project revealed insights often overlooked by institutions and reshaped how faculty view �þ��� and student engagement. Attendees were invited to rethink mentoring as a space for shared power and student leadership in higher education.

Cultivating Teacher Agency: An Examination of Capstone Projects in a Master of Education Programme
Bronwyn Harris, Nermin Vehabovic, Heidi Hollingsworth and Melaine Rickard
This presentation examined how M.Ed. candidates enacted teacher agency through equity-focused capstone projects, integrating research and reflection to design meaningful K-12 instruction. The projects emphasized student agency, social justice, and community impact, highlighting graduate study’s role in fostering educators who challenge inequities. It showcased how equity-driven curriculum design deepens engagement and supports inclusive education.

Beyond Books – A Game of Life for First Year �þ���’ Academic, Social, and Emotional Development
Margret S. Sigurdardottir, Jill Marie McSweeney, Saffie Hollingsworth and Berglind Eva Benediktsdóttir
Introducing “Beyond Books,” an interactive board game designed to help first-year students navigate academic, social, and emotional challenges. The game provides a safe space to practice real-life decisions, fostering empathy, communication, and self-advocacy. The workshop included gameplay experience, theoretical insights and discussions on adapting the tool to support holistic student transitions.

Expanding Our Understanding of Student Trust Perceptions: A Trust Collaborative Project
Kathryn Sutherland, Ted Murcray, Jill McSweeney, Peter Felten, Rachel Forsyth, Debra Grantham, Laurel Schut, Nancy Chick, Kate Thompson, Saffie Hollingsworth, Neal Blank and Subin Kim
This collaborative project explored student perspectives on trust in university teachers through four dimensions: cognition, affect, values and identity. Participants discussed adapting the trust model across diverse cultural and institutional settings to strengthen relational and inclusive learning environments. The session aimed to build global partnerships for advancing research and practice on teacher-student trust.

Fostering Sense of Belonging in and Through Educational Development
Peter Felten and Gabriela Pleschova
This workshop examined how a strong sense of belonging supports students and staff to thrive amid challenges, while belonging uncertainty can lead to isolation and disempowerment. Drawing on recent research and literature, participants reflected on belonging and explored ways educational developers can foster inclusive academic environments. The interactive session emphasized agency in creating equitable, collaborative spaces for all.

A Framework for Building and Assessing Equity-Centered Peer Mentoring Programs
Olivia Choplin, Krista Craven, Margarita Safronova, Gabriel Kwek Wu-Xin and Diana Gregory
This session introduced a research-based framework for equity-centered peer mentoring in academic support, developed through a comparative study across three countries. Participants engaged with key findings and an assessment tool designed to help institutions build or improve peer mentoring programs. The framework addresses the complex realities of higher education, offering practical ways to support equitable student success.

Sarah Bunnell, director of Elon’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and associate professor of psychology, and George Talbert, assistant professor of marketing and sales, co-presented “The Power of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning for Individual and Institutional Transformation, in Business Schools and Beyond.” The online session marked the group’s second community event and drew educators from across Europe and beyond.

Bunnell opened by tracing SoTL’s roots to Ernest Boyer’s influential 1990 framework, which expanded the definition of scholarship to include systematic study of student learning. She then expanded on the field’s history to include later contributions from scholars like Elon’s Peter Felten, assistant provost for �þ��� and learning, executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning, and professor of history, whose work has helped establish public dissemination, peer review and collaboration as foundational principles of SoTL practice.

Talbert then offered a personal lens, reflecting on his own transition from a senior marketing and sales career into higher education and how engaging with SoTL has reshaped his approach to �þ��� and student learning. Rather than focusing solely on content delivery and student satisfaction, he described moving toward deeper questions about how students’ thinking develops and whether his �þ��� approaches achieve their intended learning outcomes. This personal insight was highlighted by event organizers as a “”, and its accessibility to faculty across disciplines, not just educational researchers.

Bunnell and Talbert’s work is an example of meaningful collaboration between faculty across disciplines who center student learning, professional growth, and development of one’s �þ��� practice within their work. Their session is a meaningful contribution to the growing international dialogue about SoTL’s role in higher education, which Elon is increasingly recognized as leading. The invitation for the keynote reflects the continued recognition of Elon’s leadership in �þ��� �þ��� and educational development on the global stage. Following the session, Bunnell and Talbert were invited to remain engaged with the international SoTL community, with plans to continue building on the conversation in future collaborations.

The article, “,” continues the Rivera-Serrano Lab’s work exploring the potential of reoviruses as cancer-targeting agents. The study examined a panel of genetically distinct reoviruses across three epithelial cancer cell models. The work found that different reovirus strains showed cell line-dependent patterns of infectivity and cancer cell killing, with some reassortant viruses showing enhanced activity compared with parental strains. The findings suggest that the effectiveness of reovirus-based cancer-targeting approaches may depend not only on viral genetics, but also on the specific cancer cell context.

Reoviruses are being studied as potential oncolytic agents, or viruses that preferentially infect and kill cancer cells. While much of the field has focused on one prototype strain, the Elon study highlights the importance of exploring broader reovirus genetic diversity. Because reoviruses contain segmented genomes, different strains can exchange genome segments through a process known as reassortment, generating viruses with new combinations of traits that may influence infection, replication and cytotoxicity.

The article reinforces the value of comparative screens in cancer virotherapy research. The study found that viral infectivity and cancer cell killing did not always fully overlap, suggesting that efficient infection alone does not necessarily predict how strongly a virus will reduce cancer cell viability. Instead, the findings point to a more complex relationship among viral entry, replication, antiviral responses and cell death pathways.

The project builds on ongoing research in Rivera-Serrano’s laboratory, where �þ��� students use cell biology, virology and immunology approaches to understand how viral genetics influence cancer cell susceptibility. Hutchinson, the article’s first author and Nursing major, contributed to experimental work and data analysis as part of his mentored research experience in the lab for three semesters and participation in Elon’s 2025 Summer Undergraduate Research Experience.

Carter, who performed research as a visiting high school student in the summer of 2025, contributed to data analysis, highlighting the lab’s broader commitment to expanding access to biomedical research experiences beyond the �þ��� level. Dagli, who recently co-authored a related study in Virus Genes on reovirus reassortants with enhanced activity against fibrosarcoma cells, also contributed to the current work as part of the lab’s continuing effort to evaluate how viral genetic diversity shapes oncolytic potential.

Thirteen students participated in AI Play, held June 15-19 in Lindner Hall on Elon’s campus, where they learned about artificial intelligence while improving their AI literacy.

“The camp provides a way for students to get interested in this technology in an unplugged way,” said Alexis Goslen, an assistant professor or computer science. “We used a lot of ‘unplugged’ activities that do not involve computers like ‘Guess Whose Face,’ a game where the students act as the facial recognition system and we introduce the concepts by connecting it to unlocking your phone.”

�þ��� participated in several hands-on learning activities that introduced concepts about pathfinding, perception and machine learning, speech recognition and more.

“We did an activity about facial recognition and that was really cool to see how AI uses facial recognition in our everyday devices and how a few viewpoints can map out entire facial features,” said Trisha Anna, a seventh grader at Durham Academy in Durham, North Carolina.

The camp focused every day on a “big idea” of an artificial intelligence concept. �þ��� learned about concepts and worked in groups to apply the concept before ending with a group discussion on ethics.

“The ethics discussions were my favorite part of camp,” Goslen said. “The students seemed excited to talk about different scenarios using AI and they had really interesting perspectives. The discussions showed how the camp was challenging their thinking and I loved seeing students’ engagement in that.”

The activities throughout the week gave students the opportunity to problem solve, learn the basics of artificial intelligence, coding and ethics.

“I wanted to attend AI Play because I really wanted to learn AI and how to use it without doing anything bad and I also thought it would be a fun experience to try something new and meet new friends,” said Caitlyn Stephens, a seventh grader at Blessed Sacrament School in Burlington, North Carolina.

Throughout the week, Goslen noticed the students’ learning and growing.

“We held a workshop where students got to see the Elon robot dog and the campers were amazed by it,” Goslen said. “They had so many questions and their questions were often based on material we had covered in the camp. It was nice to hear their questions because it demonstrated the knowledge they gained from the camp.”

As technology and artificial intelligence grow more prevalent in everyday life, it is important for education about these technologies to be introduced earlier, Goslen said.

Goslen said she hopes the camp sparked students’ interest in technology, computer science and engineering and remember the concepts when they interact with technology and choose how to use it.

The campers agreed.

“Some of the new skills I learned at the camp were the proper way to use AI and how it has such a big impact on our everyday lives,” Anna said. “With AI changing so rapidly it is important for all middle schoolers to have somewhat of a grasp on it.”

For more information about AI Play and information about future camps, contact Alexis Goslen, assistant professor of computer science, at agoslen2@elon.edu.

Alongside this infographic, these stories highlight some of the positive impact across campus through community partnerships during the past academic year:

• Elon receives Carnegie classification for community engagement
• Elon recognized for advancing nonpartisan student civic engagement
• Elon creates community through Special Olympics and Elon Athletics partnership
• Turning service into impact: How an Elon alumna is bringing Alamance County together
• Literary Journalism class engages Town of Elon mayor in civic dialogue
• Writing for Impact students secure funding for local nonprofit
• Showing up, growing together: Inside KING/PINK Academy’s power of mentorship
• �þ��� reflect on service, community and connection during Fall Break
• New HealthEU course encourages students to go ‘beyond the Elon bubble’
• Elon empowers staff to make an impact in the community through paid volunteer leave