by Izabella Louk, Contributing Writer
Interview with Mason Scher (‘20) about the RISE seminar.
What’s your name, hometown and anticipated major?
My name is Mason Scher, I’m from Kingwood, New Jersey, right next to the lovely Delaware river, and I plan on being a Chemistry and Political Science double major.
Who is your RISE mentor?
I don’t have a RISE mentor yet, but we should be getting them within the next week.
What sort of research do they do?
The people who I’m thinking about working with, there’s a physicist and a statistician. What I’m really interested in is climate change, so what they do isn’t directly related, but they have a lot of background knowledge that could be very helpful.
Why did you/will you choose them as your mentor?
Well, I didn’t choose them yet, but they talked about climate change during their presentations, and they seemed very interested in pursuing the same things that I’m interested in.
What are you personally researching?
So once we get our mentors, we figure out what our project is, and then we do the research with them. So I’m planning on doing climate change and either the statistics involved with climate change, or how we decide how the climate is changing, or the rate, or something to do with that.
What about this [climate change] interests you? Do you plan to continue this research through DSSI, independent research, etc?
Okay, so I’ve always been interested in environmental issues and climate change, you know it’s a big thing; it’s the trial of our times. So I’m really interested in learning as much as I can about it so I can talk more intelligently about it. But as far as DSSI, I might be doing it over the summer with Doctor Hendricks, who does atmospheric chemistry, and I work in his lab now. So we’re looking at some of the different mechanisms of climate change and different things that are happening in the atmosphere, which very, very little is known about. So it’s definitely something I’m interested in continuing with throughout college.
Why did you want to be a part of RISE?
It’s so cool that you get to work one-on-one or two-on-one with a mentor. You get their full attention, and they clearly have so much experience since they’ve been in the field for such a long time. So they’re not just from academia, but they were in the world so they have a different perspective. If they’re here for RISE, they’re clearly still very passionate about science and about learning with us. And it’s just such a cool thing that I’ve never heard of at any other school.
Fun question, what’s the best science joke or pun you’ve ever heard?
Oh my gosh, um, I’m bad at this…Science jokes are sodium funny! Get it like, so damn, but sodium?
What’s another hobby you have?
I really like putting things on walls. I really like collecting things and then putting them on walls in pretty ways.
