SSA, or Science, Society and the Arts, is a biennial conference that has given students the chance to showcase their research across multiple disciplines for more than 20 years. But this year’s event looks a little different.
For the first time, the event is run by students.
“A lot of outreach falls on us now, which is a good thing because as students, we can think about how we want to reach other students,” said SSA Communications Chair Abby Leo, ’26.
Classes will be canceled on March 21, the day of the conference. Leo said she hopes that strategy — which was typical before the Covid-19 pandemic — will be an effective way of reaching students and encouraging attendance.
“With classes being cancelled, there’s a lot more flexibility and freedom for a broader event,” said Leo. “Having the whole day set aside will hopefully make it go really well.”
Since the first conference in 2004, SSA has been run by a board of faculty from the university, according to the Columns. This year, the only oversight is from Washington and Lee’s Director of Fellowships and Student Research Matthew Loar, who serves as SSA’s faculty advisor.
Despite the conference’s shift in leadership, SSA will still be partnering with the Office of Lifelong Learning. SSA’s general chair, Stephanie Dücker, ’26, said the new partnership aids the connection between students and university departments.
Alongside the Office of Lifelong Learning, SSA will continue the book club session from past years. This year’s book is Jayne Anne Phillips’ “Night Watch,” which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Dücker explained that she wanted to partner with the Office of Lifelong Learning for this event because “Night Watch” was already a part of their office’s programming.
To Dücker, “Night Watch” is “a complex book that’s talking about a lot of things that we think are related to unlikely pairings.” The sign-up for the book club session is on the SSA website, and attendees get a free copy of the book and an overview of its message.
SSA’s collaboration with the Office of Lifelong Learning has also added a new level of networking to the prizes awarded to presenters. Dücker explained that six presenters will receive a $50 prize, and two out of the six will have the opportunity to share their work with members of the Office of Lifelong Learning at a webinar.
Before becoming general chair, Dücker presented her own research at SSA in 2023 about Tudor women and the inheritance system. She explained how her process of becoming general chair was very natural after talking about her experience and ideas for the future of the conference with Loar.
Since stepping into their roles, both Dücker and Leo talked about how all the logistical work fell on their team of students, including finding a keynote speaker, organizing peer presenters, choosing the featured book and coordinating with downtown businesses to provide food and coffee throughout the event.
This year, the student team decided to select a theme of “Unlikely Pairings” for the conference, capturing the interdisciplinary nature of SSA.
“To us, it means thinking about what you’re doing in an academic context and the things that you care about in the classroom and combining them with things that you’re really interested in and passionate about,” said Dücker. “It’s taking something that you care about a lot and using that to fuel your academic research.”
Dücker said her choice of a chef, Carla Lalli Music, as a keynote speaker is an example of an unlikely pairing because cooking is not often taught or discussed at Washington and Lee.
According to Dücker, Music is a chef, former director of Bon Appetit magazine and an influencer on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. She will be speaking about her career and its many different turns at the SSA kickoff event on March 20 at 5 p.m. in the University Chapel.
During the conference, there will be a combination of poster exhibits, art installations and formal presentations. Leo herself will be presenting her biochemistry research and expressed her enthusiasm to share her findings with students outside of her classmates in her lab.
“I’ve presented the work that I’ve done up to this point with my lab which is really cool also, but I’m excited to hopefully be able to share it with more people who are not working with me and my peers,” said Leo. She also explained how her work fits into the unlikely pairing theme by combining a biochemical approach to something that usually falls under the category of organic chemistry.
“It’s kind of like unlikely pairings within the world of biochem, and I’m excited to present about it,” she said.
In the past, law students also participated in SSA, and events were held at the law school and undergraduate campuses. This year, the law school will be having their own conference at the same time, so SSA will only include undergraduate presenters.
The full conference schedule will be posted soon on the SSA website, Leo said.
Both Dücker and Leo agreed that the most important aspect of SSA is the opportunity for students to share their work with their peers.
“SSA is bringing the ability for students to go look at our peers’ work and what we’re doing in different subjects. We’re all doing really cool research or class projects, but there’s not always the opportunity to hear about that from each other,” Leo said.
