Ariel Parker
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
High School: Friends Central School
Major: Biology, with a minor in French
Possible Career: Science outreach, science public policy, or science education
Ariel Parker '15 is a senior who has just returned from a semester abroad in Paris. Currently, at Swarthmore, she is Co-President of Salsa con Sabor, a Small Group Leader for Swarthmore Christian Fellowship, and a Swarthmore Phonathon caller. In the past, she has served as Vice President of the Swarthmore African-American Student Society (SASS).
Over the summers, she has done research and studied at different institutions. For summer 2012, she took a course with the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA) called "Race in America Then and Now: 'Post-Racial' Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement". This course marked her first time in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee. The same summer, she worked in the microbiology lab at Swarthmore College, researching universal stress protein A in Escherichia coli.
The following summer, she did research at Rutgers University - New Brunswick through the HHMI Exceptional Research Opportunities Program. Her main project focused on the localization of Zyxin and Ajuba proteins in mammalian cells under mechanical tension.
For summer 2014, she traded in her lab coat for business attire and interned at the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC. Her research at NSF focused on broadening the participation of principal investigators of color in proposal submission and award allocation.
As a Philip Evans Scholar, she has used her Opportunity Grant for all of her summer opportunities and for her semester abroad in Paris.
After Swarthmore, Ariel hopes to find an exciting career that allows her to communicate and share science with people - whether this means education, policy, or outreach, she has yet to discover.