Biography:
My name is Emily Pifer and I am a sophomore in the Schreyer Honors College at the Pennsylvania State University. My hobbies include painting and drawing, running my own sticker company, learning German, and going to the gym. I am originally from Downingtown, Pennsylvania, a small town right outside of Philadelphia, and attended a STEM based High School. I have traveled internationally many times to places like India, the Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas, and cannot wait to travel to Germany this summer. I began taking this language in 7th grade and immediately fell in love with the German culture and language, which is why I made the choice in the Spring of my Freshman year at Penn State to pursue this major concurrently with a Chemical Engineering Major.
Project Summary:
This summer, I plan to conduct research at the Braunschweig University of Technology in Germany. I will study convergent and divergent thinking in the first language (L1 German) and second language (L2 English) in German-English bilinguals of undergraduates pursuing engineering majors. The goal of this research study is to find the difference in divergent thinking proficiency in the students’ L1 and L2, as divergent thinking is critical when working in our modern global society.