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Flat tires, the dark tetrad and customized bone replacements

A review of Monmouth College's SOFIA '26

by Barry McNamara

Monmouth, Ill. (08/25/2026) — Steep hills. Dehydration. Uncooperative tents. Cold. Flat tires. Balky gears. The police.

Yes, the deck seemed stacked against four Monmouth College student bicycle riders led by faculty member James Godde but, in the end, they couldn't be stopped.

"We trauma bonded," said Grant Haste '30 of Indianapolis, Indiana, of the SOFIA project in Wisconsin. "And it made us more grateful for what we have now - things like showers and air conditioning and access to food."

SOFIA is the acronym of the college's innovative three-week Summer Opportunity for Intellectual Activity initiative, which co-coordinator Laura Moore called "a celebration of academics" at the third and final colloquium of the pre-fall semester experience. On the following day, all seven student groups publicly displayed their work in the Center for Science and Business and were on hand to discuss their projects.

The title of the poster detailing the bikers' experience was titled "Pedals, Pilgrimage and Pixels: An Embodied Cartographic Inquiry into Place, Mobility and Digital Representation along the La Crosse Extension of the Wisconsin Way." For a summary shorter than that title, try this: Godde's students mapped their bike journey from La Crosse to Madison, covering 138.53 miles in four days and seeing all kinds of interesting things along the way.

Included in the interesting things were three historic, rock-carved railroad tunnels - including one three-quarters of a mile long - along the Elroy-Sparta State Trail, and the Way of the Cross Garden in Madison.

A few more negatives

If a night spent sore and hungry on the cold earth of a campground isn't enough of a daunting task, try these words on for size: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism. Those happen to make up psychology's "dark tetrad," and they were studied by a group exploring "bad romance" or, more specifically, the psychology of attraction in dark romance fiction. It's work that the group's student mentor, Ella D'Incognito '28 of Island Lake, Illinois, has had success with in academia, presenting her research at major conferences.

Another group of students also used creative works - television shows, movies and comics - to examine the "woke" label in sci-fi worlds. In introducing the topic, they explained that "woke" can have positive or negative connotations, depending on how it's used, similar to the word "smells." If something "smells," that usually means it has a bad odor, but when Jimmy Johns offers "free smells," that's a good thing.

Among other media, the group watched a sci-fi thriller from 1927 (Metropolis), as well as episodes of The Twilight Zone, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Young Sheldon. A particularly impactful episode from The Twilight Zone was "Eye of the Beholder," in which a woman's natural beauty makes her a freak in a futuristic society. It's not too large a leap to see that calling someone "woke" is an eye of the beholder situation.

During their colloquium presentation, the group reported that it worked in 12 different locations, logged six hours and seven minutes in transit to those locations, and took a combined 234 pages of notes.

Jack Snyder '30 of Peoria, Illinois, who accounted for 43 of those pages, said, "I loved every minute of it."

'I loved every step of it'

That was also the sentiment of the advanced manufacturing group, which was led by SOFIA co-coordinator Chris Fasano.

"I loved it. I loved every step of it," said Ruthie Okrasinski '30 of Charleston, Illinois. "I'm not from up here, so it was really good for me to get up here early and figure out the town and the campus."

The group worked on creating customized bone replacements, using a variety of advanced tools such as 3-D scanning and printing, computer-aided design (CAD) and computer numerical control (CNC) machinery.

"It was fantastic," said engineering and physics major Scott Cousins '30 of Macomb, Illinois. "I learned how to prototype biomedical devices. I'd never done research until now. I absolutely loved it."

"I liked it," added Constantine Soutsos '30 of Highland Park, Illinois, who plans to major in accounting and economics. "It was a really good opportunity to learn about something outside my field."

Also working outside his field was Michael Beckett '30 of Wenona, Illinois, an exercise science major who did a deep dive into ancient engineering. In particular, Beckett came away impressed by a method that actually worked better 2,000 years ago than it does today.

"The way they did concrete was so cool," he said. "Over time, it got stronger, as elements of the concrete mixed with water. Future societies decided to go away from that method."

Beckett and the others in the classics group presented their findings during the first of the three colloquia, which had a theme of fermentation. In addition to the fermentation required to create garum, a fish-based condiment that was the ketchup of ancient times, students working on Moore's "Edible Science" project fermented cucumbers, while also exploring sourdough bread and gluten-free cookies, among other items.

The other SOFIA project was led by biology professor Janet Ugolino, who introduced students to the C. elegans worms that she uses in her neuroscience research. The project was titled "Investigating the Effects of Supplements Using C. elegans."

Media Attachments

TRAILS AND TUNNELS: Faculty member James Godde (on bike) is pictured with the four students he led on a tour of Wisconsin. From the left are Calvin Cotton, Grant Haste, Lennon Klinck and Lexi Serpette.

GOOD TO-GA: Michael Beckett dressed for the part for the Aug. 22 poster presentation of ancient engineering.

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