Annual Spring Spotlight to be Held on Campus May 23 Students and faculty will summarize and display their Spring Term research and coursework.

By Brian Laubscher
May 6, 2025

Washington and Lee University will hold its annual Spring Spotlight (formerly Spring Term Festival) on Friday, May 23, between the hours of 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. at several locations within Leyburn Library. The event, traditionally held on the final day of Spring Term, is free and open to the W&L community.

The Spring Spotlight is an opportunity for the university to recognize and celebrate the amazing work undertaken by W&L’s students and faculty during the intense and engaging four-week-long Spring Term courses. The event, which first debuted in 2010 and annually features more than 20 classes, is a joint effort sponsored by the Houston H. Harte Center for Teaching and Learning, University Library and the Provost’s Office. Formats include interactive and web-based projects, audio and podcasts, video and multimedia projects, visual communication and graphics and digital publishing and writing.

The Spring Spotlight is slightly revamped this year, with several classes presenting in person and numerous others featured on the Spring Spotlight website. The in-person event features classes holding their presentations in 1-hour blocks within the library’s Northen Auditorium, Collaboration Gallery, Innovation Classroom (Leyburn 109), the Teaching Hub (Leyburn 119) and the exhibit space on the library’s main level.

“We adjusted the Spring Spotlight to be more inclusive of the range of unique experiences students have during Spring Term,” said JT Torres, director of the Harte Center. “Consider that study abroad faculty and students often travel during the day of the in-person event, so now they will have a chance to share their experiences with the W&L community. Additionally, we had a sense that we weren’t fully honoring Spring Term with just holding a single day event. The website allows us to curate and present the innovative teaching and learning that happens at W&L throughout the year. Not only will the website offer faculty ideas and possibilities for their future Spring Term courses, but we can now communicate to students, parents and the larger W&L community what they can expect by enrolling in Spring Term courses. Student work completed during such an intensive period can now have an authentic audience as their published work can easily be shared.”

Last year’s event featured in-person presentations from a diverse array of courses, including Sustainable Development and Social Entrepreneurship: Cuba in the 21st Century, Contemporary East Asian Cinema and Food Policy.

Among the many faculty who annually take advantage of the opportunity to showcase their Spring Term classes is Sue Ann McCarty, visiting assistant professor of anthropology. Her class Laboratory Methods in Archaeology has frequently presented.

“I am continually amazed by what W&L students can accomplish in just four short weeks,” said McCarty. “When students start my class, they often don’t know the bones of the vertebrate body, how stratigraphy relates to dating an object or even what archaeology is. By the end of the semester and the Spring Spotlight, students are showcasing the independent research they’ve done for their hypothetical lab research grant applications and sharing what they found in their zooarchaeological data sets (the material remains of human interactions with animals). They learn both the scientific method and the humanistic ethics and theory underlying our work. Sometimes students’ families attend the event, and I love hearing them appreciate what students have achieved.”