Elizabethtown College's Summer Creative Arts and Research Program (SCARP) was created to support independent student scholarship under the sponsorship of a faculty or staff mentor. The program is a non-credit experiential learning program designed to enhance professional skills and provide a competitive advantage to participating students in the pursuit of career opportunities and graduate studies.
Participating faculty scholars and researchers also benefit from student involvement in support of professional scholarship and research agendas.
What Would it Take to Offset 100% of Elizabethtown College’s Electricity Consumption with Solar Power?
Emmanuel Attah spent his summer alongside faculty mentor, Associate Professor of Engineering & Physics Brenda Read-Daily researching what it would take to transition Elizabethtown College’s electricity consumption to 100% solar. In addition to gaining in-depth knowledge about how solar panels work and their substantial benefits, Attah is hoping to raise awareness for sustainability at the College and explore the feasibility of this hypothetical initiative.
Biomechanical Analysis of an Optimized Sprint Start
Melissa Patton ’25 combined two passions through research on campus to identify the optimal sprint start for track runners. Patton, a sprinter on the women's track and field team, and faculty mentor Professor of Engineering & Physics Kurt DeGoede utilized an open-source software developed at Stanford University, OpenCap to record and process 3D motion capture data.
Minimizing the Effects of Stimulation Artifact in Bionic Hands Equipped with Biomimetic Sensory Feedback
Elizabethtown College Engineering major Caroline Casumpang ’26 spent her summer on campus researching how effective electrocutaneous stimulation is in helping prosthetic users determine the appropriate amount of force needed to pick up objects without breaking them.
Casumpang worked alongside faculty mentor and Assistant Professor of Engineering & Physics Mark Brinton in a continuation of a 2023 SCARP project, running tests with the ultimate goal of helping to achieve a natural feeling for prosthetics by using electric stimulation.
eTherapy 2024
Computer Science majors Joey Wagner ’26 and Alexander Roop ’26 worked this summer to redevelop eTherapy, a mobile application previously designed by Elizabethtown College students and faculty to provide biofeedback in occupational therapy and physical therapy sessions. Wagner and Roop worked toward developing a new custom tool for a group of Etown Occupational Therapy students to take with them to a regional clinic this fall to work with head injury patients.
Working alongside Professor of Engineering & Physics Kurt DeGoede, the Blue Jays created a system using Bluetooth sensors to track patients’ motion from the head and arms, which now include haptic functionality for more accurate results. Wagner and Roop’s research is a continuation of over 10 years of collaboration between various Etown Engineering and Occupational Therapy students and faculty.
Augmented Reality Tool for Engineering Analysis
Through the use of cutting-edge Augmented Reality (AR) software, Computer Engineering major Leif Hoffman ’26 worked alongside faculty mentor and Associate Professor of Engineering & Physics, Jean Batista Abreu to develop an application that will allow Elizabethtown College students to better visualize concepts they are learning in entry-level Engineering courses. Their work aimed to make problem-solving exercises more authentic and relevant for students while creating a repository of learning resources that move away from unrelatable textbook problems to provide interactive, realistic structures and machines to study.