The most help I can do for the preservation and heritage of Elmina castle, Fort Amsterdam, and the other slave castles along of the coast of Ghana is to teach others how they can study and care for the castle tomorrow.

In a break from their work on the forts of the Ghanaian coast, mechanical engineering major Seungju Yeo ’20 learns more about the culture and language of the Ashanti region of modern-day Ghana.

The goal of this entry isn’t to try and definitively answer these questions, but rather to discuss how I got my feet planted. The first step was to acknowledge that I am not here to be comfortable.

“As a student in the digital media studies department, it amazed me to see how the different tools and methods of studying the structures added to our understanding of how the forts were built and how they might have changed over time.”

“Since arriving at Elmina, my heart has been flooded with sorrowful thoughts that fly back to the colonial period, when elegant pieces of architecture such as Elmina Castle were built to house pillaged materials such as gold and ivory, as well as human beings.”

A University researcher who predicted that laser pulses could generate ultrafast electrical currents in theory now believes he can explain exactly how and why actual experiments to create these currents have succeeded.

Joseph Marron ’86, an alumnus of the Institute of Optics, has more than 20 patents to his credit. But his latest, for a new way to obtain real-time readings from large laser radars, has special significance.

Engineering student Kate Korslund ’20 finally reaches Elmina Castle, home for the field school she her classmates will be spending their summer learning about the historic importance and preservation of these coastal forts.

Hear from eight Rochester students spending this summer at a field school in Ghana. Led by Professors Renato Perucchio, Michael Jarvis, and Chris Muir, the students are studying the engineering, historical, and cultural aspects of the country’s historic coastal forts.

On her first days in Ghana, mechanical engineering major Louisa Anderson ‘20 settles in for a summer at a field school near Accra, learning about the history, people – and food.