Student Fellowship Awards – Summer and Winter Break 2007

Each year Carleton juniors have the opportunity to apply for a number of fellowships that allow them to follow their interests through projects completed over the summer before their senior year. As always, this year’s applicants proposed a fascinating and exciting array of projects. The following is a summary of the selected proposals.

Chang-Lan Fellowships

Aimee Downes ’08 plans to travel to Hong Kong and Beijing to study liberal theology in modern China. Attending worship services and social events in each city, Aimee will compare how government regulations influence religious practices in a municipality under direct governmental control versus one that maintains its own legal system. This project is also funded by the Allen and Irene Salisbury Fellowship.

Wayne Soon ’08 will spend the summer researching the Tanzania-Zambia railway project, focusing on the role of China’s revolutionary ideology. Interviewing railway workers, diplomats, and other rail personnel, Wayne’s research will explore the question of historical continuity in ideological interactions between China and Africa.

Class of 1963 Fellowships

Paul Caine ’08 and Terin Mayer ’08, seeing cities as texts, will undertake a critical reading of the unique aesthetic structure of Berlin, a city whose place in history reflects broader themes of modernity and the struggles that have defined the west. Paul and Terin will organize the text, audio, and visual documentation they collect into a multi-media volume, which will be available online.

Matthew Dettinger ’08 will conduct research on Storglaciären glacier in Artic Sweden. Submersing a camera down a borehole, Matthew will gather information on debris band thickness and depth and hopes to create a three-dimensional map of the glacier’s terminus.

Sherod Haynes ’08 will enroll in an intensive eight-week dance program at Blade Dance Academy in New York City where he will study hip-hop. Sherod will participate in performances, workshops, and master classes.

David Schraub ’08 will undertake research on the Jim Crow era, comparing the discourse white officials and citizens used to justify maintaining racist systems to contemporary discourse on race and racism. David will study state court cases and will utilize primary sources in the Library of Congress.

Independent Research Fellowships

Ariel Aaronson-Eves ’08 will volunteer with Population Caring Organization, a local NGO, at Budumburam Liberian refugee camp in Ghana, facilitating groups that focus on reconciliation and conflict resolution among the displaced Liberians and providing them with tools and education to prevent civil strife. This project is also funded by the Richard Salisbury Fellowship.

Charles Gokey ’08 plans to work with and record young, unknown rap artists in Chicago. Creating a website that features these artists’ music, Charles hopes to foster a positive and collaborative artistic community that will continue to grow after his summer involvement in the project is complete.

Elizabeth Lienesch ’08 will study prayer in America, focusing the three major monotheistic religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Through attending prayer conferences and workshops, partaking in retreats, and conducting interviews, Elizabeth hopes to deepen her understanding of American religiosity.

Muna Noor ’08 will take a class on strategic corporate research to learn about and determine corporate power structure. She will then investigate a target company for a local union about how subcontracting of janitorial services by corporations affects union organizing.

Rob Thomas ’08 will design and develop a vocabulary-building software tool, with functionality similar to flashcards, for use by students in Carleton’s introductory language sequence. The program will support any language and be compatible with both Windows and Macintosh operating systems.

Kelley Fellowships

Peter Olds ’08 plans to travel to Tolagnaro, Madagascar, to investigate social networks that aid in the delivery of medical care. Through conversations and interviews with medical and public health professionals, patients, and residents not directly involved in medical care, Peter hopes to gain understanding of the origins, composition, and roles of these networks.

Katie Paul ’08 will travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and La Paz, Bolivia, to undertake a cross-country comparison of the success of microloans in alleviating poverty. Katie will approach this study on the institutional level, working with local banks, and the individual level, interviewing business owners who have received loans.

Larson International Fellowships

Jane Caffrey ’08 will intern in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with the largest broadcast news network in Latin America, Globo News. In addition to gaining hands-on experience as a news intern, Jane will live and work among Brazilians.

Margaret Cremin ’08 will travel to several Marian apparition sites and festivals in southern Europe to learn about the role of Mary for today’s Catholic women. Margaret is interested in personal accounts and will join in several pilgrimages and events.

Zachary Hyman ’08 plans to trek through parts of China, Burma, and India, following the path of the famed Buddhist philosopher Xuan Zang, one of the first travelers on the Silk Road. In true Buddhist-pilgrim fashion, Zach will undertake the first portion of his journey on foot. In addition to investigating how Xuan has been memorialized, Zach will collect information for his senior comprehensive exercise on 19th-century trading rights.

Sean Noonan ’08 will see China from behind the handlebars of a bike, joining, training, and racing with a cycling team native to Yunan province in Southwest China. Sean hopes not only to gain an understanding of Chinese cycling culture, but also to share his American outlook on training and racing with his new teammates.

Amanda Smith ’08 plans to travel around the southern tip of South America, using Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle as her guide. Amanda hopes to gain insight into the interaction between culture and the environment, then and now.

Fue Thao ’08 will travel to southern China to connect with the Hmoob communities there, many of which are the result of migration. Part of the Hmoob migration to Minnesota, Fue is interested in the migration stories of others. Immersing himself in the disparate Hmoob populations, Fue hopes to gain understanding of changing cultural perspectives of youth in different environments. This project is also funded by the Wu Fellowship.

Ben Tompkins ’08 will spend three months in London this summer in an apprenticeship with master glassblower Adam Aaronson, one of the premier glassblowers of Great Britain. Ben also plans to travel to other glassblowing facilities in England and Scotland and will have the opportunity to create art of his own.

Tommy Walker ’08 will travel the full length of the Silk Road from Istanbul, Turkey, to Xi’an, China, closely observing cultures and geographies, as well as interacting with local people. Tommy is particularly interested in the countries of Central Asia and hopes to gain a sense of the future of the region.

Allen and Irene Salisbury Fellowship

Alex Chohlas-Wood ’08 will travel to urban areas throughout China and India, following in the footsteps of his grandpa, grandma, and father, each of whom traveled these areas alone during young adulthood. Alex will photograph changing urban environments and aims to capture the complexities of the interactions between tradition and rapid development.

Richard Salisbury Fellowship

Ariel Aaronson-Eves ’08 will volunteer with Population Caring Organization, a local NGO, at Budumburam Liberian refugee camp in Ghana, facilitating groups that focus on reconciliation and conflict resolution among the displaced Liberians and providing them with tools and education to prevent civil strife. This project is also funded by the Independent Research Fellowship.

Wu Fellowship

Fue Thao ’08 will travel to southern China to connect with the Hmoob communities there, many of which are the result of migration. Part of the Hmoob migration to Minnesota, Fue is interested in the migration stories of others. Immersing himself in the disparate Hmoob populations, Fue hopes to gain understanding of changing cultural perspectives of youth in different environments. This project is also funded by the Larson Fellowship.

Initiative for Service Internships in International Development

Elizabeth Alspach ’08 will spend this summer volunteering with the Oaxaca Streetchildren Grassroots, an organization dedicated to the care, growth and education of Triqui Indian youth in southern Mexico. She will be involved in administrative work, life skills development and the tuberculosis testing operation in one of Mexico’s most impoverished communities.

Mya Dosch ’09 pursuing a six week internship in Cusco, Peru through the ProPeru organization. She will either assist a local high school or primary school teacher with art and English workshops, or work with K’anchay Wasi, a local women’s center, while also living with a Peruvian family.

Olivia Jee ’08 will spend 8 weeks with Child Family Health Int’l assisting in a number of pediatric hospitals. She will be working with local doctors to examine and treat patients and will be involved in helping with problems caused by poverty.

Beth Mynar ‘08 will volunteer for eight weeks with Child Family Health International in La Paz, Bolivia. She will focus on pediatric public health, participating in clinical rotations that serve street children and disadvantaged families.

Mary Ellen Stitt ‘08 will work with la Fundacion Pro-Habitat, a Bolivian organization that works to promote the participation of various low-income communities in sustainably improving their surroundings.

Rachel Carroll ’08 will spend nine weeks teaching English in the small town of Phaltan, India, at a school renowned for its equal education regardless of caste, gender, and religion. She will tutor seventh, eighth, and ninth year students in reading and writing while living with a local Marathi teacher.

Peter Gill ’09 will work at the Mountain Institute, which works with farmers throughout the Himalayas in agricultural extension and environmental preservation work. Peter will work on their programs involved in livestock management and medicinal plants agriculture.

Rachel Klein ’08 will live and volunteer in Veraguas, Panama with Amigos de las Americas. For eight weeks, she will work closely with community members to promote youth leadership through workshops focusing on health, the environment, and artistic expression as well as through service projects.

Sarojini Rao ’09 is going to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala on the Cross-Cultural Solutions program. Although she does not know her work assignment yet, she hopes to work with women’s groups and with children, teaching English and helping with daily activities.

Juliet Dana ’09 is traveling to Ladakh, a northern region of India, to volunteer with the SECMOL organization. SECMOL aims to reform the educational system of Ladakh and build sustainability within the region. Juliet will be working at the school’s summer program, teaching English and helping to rebuild the students’ self-esteem.

Hope Harvey ’09 will be working in a nonprofit day care center to teach and help children who have been affected by poverty or abuse.

Lily Li ’08 will participate in a Cross-Cultural Solutions program based in Bangkok, Thailand. She will spend 5 weeks engaging in medical volunteer projects, such as observing and assisting local health professionals, caring for children and infants, or working with people with disabilities.

Lindsey Shaughnessy ’09 will be working with the international microfinance organization ProMujer by researching and offering microfinance loans, as well as by teaching women’s empowerment, business skills, and healthcare through workshops.

Alexis White '08 will be teaching English in a rural community that would otherwise not have access to a native English speaker.

Newman Language Scholarship

Shannon Carcelli ’08 will be working with the U.S. State Department for ten weeks this summer in the Politics and Economy section of the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City. She will be developing information and contacts for the 2007 Human Rights Report. Shannon will spend time gathering information from Guatemalan NGOs and government ministries and reporting to the Human Rights and Labor Office of the Embassy.

ENTS Internship

Rebecca Walling, '08, will hike and research the aquatic insects along 550 miles of the Appalachian Trail, stopping everyday to make environmental observations and collect insects along the streams in the trail corridor. Rebecca explains that streams are veins in the wilderness, where the presence of certain aquatic insects in the water reveal the health of the overall ecosystem. She will present her findings in the Fall.

Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows

Maureen Barradas ’09, The Role of José Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere in the Philippines’ Revolution Against Spain in 1898. Maureen’s project examines the role of José Rizal’s novel Noli Me Tangere (published 1887) in articulating the abuses of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines and galvanizing the movements and voices of opposition that eventually led to the successful rebellion against Spain in 1898.

Marquita Davis ’09, Empowering the Masses. In her project, Marquita seeks to understand more fully the nature of the Black Aesthetic Movement of the 1960s, a movement overshadowed both by the Harlem Renaissance of the early twentieth century and by the Black nationalist movements, such as the Black Panthers, that were its contemporaries.

Martha Perez ’09, The Self: Constructs of Time and Identity. Martha’s project focuses on the nature of the self and whether and how identities or identity relates to self. Is there a core of an individual’s being that does not change and how do our various identifiers (gender, race, ethnicity) map onto this core? What is the role of time in the concept of identity?

Alexander Persaud ’09, Intellectuals and Caribbean Development. Alexander will investigate, first, the ideas of two Caribbean intellectuals—C.R.L. James and Walter Rodney—on the subjects of colonialism and post-colonial development in the Caribbean, especially Guyana, Trinidad, and Tobago. In particular, Alexander is interested in understanding these thinkers’ broader understanding of development as not only economic growth but also a series of significant cultural and social transformations.

Savannah Steele ’09, The Maroon Mothers: Women’s Syncretic Religion in the Cockpit Country of Jamaica. Savannah will be conducting field research in Jamaica’s rugged Cockpit country (in the northwestern highlands) on a little studied local religion known as Pocomania in an effort not only to document and understand the religion itself but also to answer larger questions about the dynamics of religious syncretism, the role of women as bearers of culture, and the structure and function of religious ritual in contemporary Jamaican culture.

Whitney Richards-Calathes ’08, Youth Criminalization and Educational Experience: “Urban” Girls’ Identity, Formation, and Empowerment. In her project, Whitney will undertake fieldwork in Chicago and New York as well as extensive reading in the scholarly literature in order to understand the process whereby inner city youth come to be categorized as “at risk” or “deviant” and the effects on their formation of being placed within institutional structures and social environments explicitly designed for individuals labeled “at risk,”or “deviant.”

Clara Tsang ’08, A Petrologic Analysis of Mauna Loa Xenoliths to Investigate the Existence of Secondary Magma Chambers in the Southwest Rift Zone of Mauna Loa. Already equipped with one summer’s worth of field experience on Mauna Loa, Clara will return to conduct six months of supervised research on xenoliths from Mauna Loa’s Hapaimamo Cone and southwestern rift flows. By comparing the geochemical and petrological properties of her samples with those found in the context of the main magma chamber, Clara hopes to determine whether Mauna Loa contains a secondary magma chamber, a finding of great relevance to the assessment of the risk and magnitude of a volcanic eruption.

Mellon Mays Associate (sponsored by President Robert Oden)

Ebun Odeneye ’08, A Study of the Acquisition and Transmission of AIDS-related Knowledge Among Undergraduate Students of Nigerian Descent in Houston, TX. Ebun’s research project emerges from one of the central areas in medical anthropology as well as being informed by the current epidemiological crisis that many African nations face in the presence and spread of AIDS among their populations. Through her study of a population of Nigerian immigrants in the appropriate age demographic, Ebun hopes to understand more fully the ways in which Nigerian youth understand AIDS, how they discuss this disease and its relationship to sexual, drug, and other activities, and where they see the authoritative resources in their community.