ALINA PANEK
Special to The Denisonian
It is time to let your inner nerd out. Synapse magazine is a literary magazine modeled after The Scientific American that is for the “Ohio Five” schools.
The founders at Oberlin College five years ago set out to change the collegiate scientific community by creating an outlet for scientific minds to reach out to other disciplines.
This year is the first for Denison students to participate. Students from Oberlin reached out to Katie Darrah ’17 last year to start a new branch.
“I got an email from them one day and they were like, ‘Hey! We think you should start this up!’” Darrah said. “I still have no idea how they found me. I was president of the Pre-Med Club before and that’s the only way I could think of them reaching me.”
Darrah’s goal for the first issue is to find a solid group of people to continue the Denison Synapse branch.
“I’m hoping for five or six people that are really passionate about it because I’m about to graduate in a few months,” Darrah said.
The magazine publishes once a semester and starts looking for new articles a few weeks after the first week of November.
Darrah suggested looking at previous issue of the Synapse on their website if interested students are having trouble about what they want to do.
“Anything that remotely ties back to science.” Darrah said. “The goal is to work intercollegiately, to connect across disciplines so science people, art people, English people and to promote science awareness and education. So opinions and overviews are great!”
Darrah is excited about this new chapter and believes that as long as everyone stays committed this semester will run smoothly. She also stressed that writing for this magazine is nothing like writing something for a science class.
“This is a more relaxed setting for a general audience,” Darrah said. “So if you’re writing something for another class or job, if you want to make it count for this too you can. It can be a little bit of fun writing.”
Synapse also uses resources from other schools in the branches. An example that Darrah gave is that if one was writing an article, someone from Oberlin could edit it and another from Kenyon could provide an illustration, making it truly intercollegiate.
If you are interested in being involved with the Synapse, please contact Katie Darrah ([email protected]) or their faculty advisor Professor Matthews ([email protected]) from Psychology and Neuroscience department.