Ubben will be honored at a luncheon on Monday, July 16, in conjunction with the CASE Summit for Leaders in Advancement in Washington, D.C.

“For more than 30 years, Ubben has been an active volunteer and served as a member or leader of various boards and committees, including president of the Alumni Association Board of Directors, member and chair of the DePauw University Board of Trustees and honorary chair of the National Campaign Committee,” notes today’s announcement. “In his nomination letter, the president of DePauw University noted that Ubben has ‘elevated this institution’s national reputation and redefined student and faculty opportunities’ through his volunteer involvement and significant gifts that created several academic programs. This includes multiple gifts to establish 15 Ubben Endowed Chairs and an endowed lectureship that brings world leaders to DePauw’s Midwest campus.”

Read more here.

Tim Ubben chaired DePauw’s Board of Trustees from 1998 to 2001 and continues his service as an advisory trustee; he was a member of the Alumni Association Board from 1983-87 and served as chair from 1985-87; chaired The Campaign for DePauw: Leadership for a New Century, which raised more than $376 million; was a member of the presidential search committee in 2007-08; and was awarded DePauw’s Old Gold Goblet for “eminence in life’s work and service to alma mater” in 1993.

The founder of Lincoln Capital Management, Ubben has served on the national board of directors of the Posse Foundation since 2004, founded the Chicago Posse in 1999, and was honored as a “Posse Star” in 2009; as a director of the Boys and Girls Club of Collier County, Florida; and as director of the Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples, Florida. (above right: Sharon and Tim Ubben flank Ubben Lecturer Bill Clinton; November 18, 2011)

Tim Ubben and his wife and DePauw classmate, Sharon Williams Ubben, will receive honorary doctoral degrees at the University’s 173rd commencement this Sunday, May 20.  Learn more in this previous story.

Today’s economic environment, with its stubbornly high level of unemployment, is pressuring liberal arts institutions to justify the “value proposition” offered by our undergraduate programs. This was one of the concerns that brought leaders together at Wake Forest University for a conference in April, focusing on careers and the liberal arts in the 21st century. In particular, we are being asked to explain how a liberal arts degree advances employment prospects at a challenging time that many believe favors immediately applicable, career-ready skills.

Along with my peers at other liberal arts colleges, I regularly articulate the value of a liberal arts education: providing interdisciplinary opportunities for analytical, problem-solving and adaptive learning that produce graduates who think creatively, innovatively and expansively; express themselves persuasively; and operate ethically as citizens committed to making a difference in a constantly transforming world.

Candidly, many people feel this rationale sounds more philosophical than practical. With more than a decade of experience in the field of career development, I could cite countless examples of liberal arts graduates who embody these skills and whose professional successes would quickly silence the prevailing rhetoric about the practicality of the liberal arts. But rather than cherry-pick stories from the hundreds of students I’ve advised, an analysis of the educational credentials of leaders in the business, nonprofit, and government sectors of our economy may help to stem the notion that a degree in the liberal arts is impractical.

According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s classification system, there are 270 U.S. baccalaureate colleges that offer arts and sciences programs — the designation that most closely aligns with the mission of liberal arts colleges and includes Grinnell and our peer institutions. These schools represent a subset of the 4,634 U.S. higher education institutions in the Carnegie database, and just 2.2 percent of students enrolled in U.S. undergraduate programs attend these colleges.

Consistent with these statistics, one might extrapolate that societal leaders would reflect a similar distribution with 2.2 percent holding degrees from baccalaureate institutions offering arts and sciences programs. However, after analyzing data from three distinct sources, a striking difference revealed itself – one that demonstrates a strong correlation between a liberal arts education and career leadership positions in the business, nonprofit and government sectors.

In researching the undergraduate institutions of leaders in these three broad fields, the Grinnell College communications team and I consulted three data sets: for businesses, the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies; for nonprofit organizations, leaders from The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Philanthropy 400; and, for government, the 100 U.S. senators. In each case, the undergraduate institutions these leaders attended were coded in accordance with the Carnegie classification system.

Overall, 11.33 percent of the leaders across the above three sectors graduated from baccalaureate colleges that offer arts and sciences programs. That’s more than five times the expected 2.2 percent incidence of enrollment in baccalaureate arts and sciences colleges based on Carnegie’s classification. Looking at each sector individually, 11.75 percent of Philanthropy 400 leaders, 12 percent of U.S. Senators and 10.87 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs received their undergraduate education at baccalaureate arts and sciences colleges, i.e., liberal arts institutions.

These findings suggest that a liberal arts education may be a significant contributor to the career success of leaders in the business, government and nonprofit sectors. Today, perhaps more than ever, our nation’s leaders need to be able to strategically think and plan, deftly interpret changing global conditions, effectively marshal expansive resources and collaboratively guide teams of diverse people. Students at liberal arts colleges are challenged and supported to cultivate these skills throughout their coursework and co-curricular activities and then apply them during undergraduate research projects, volunteer experiences, and internships.

In today’s job market, many people are urging liberal arts colleges to refocus our academic efforts on career preparation. While those of us who lead career development programs at liberal arts institutions are very serious in our commitment to cultivating a dynamic learning community that allows students to grow and develop in remarkable ways, we also know that the educational experiences we offer are especially effective in fostering the enduring, broadly applicable skills needed for the workplace of tomorrow. In fact, the data presented here clearly illustrate that liberal arts graduates will not only be well-positioned for career success, but that many of them will be poised to become our nation’s next leaders.

Click here for the source article.

Jacob Dein ’12 is from Honesdale, Pa., where layers of gas-filled Marcellus shale lie untapped beneath the landscape.  Just north of the Poconos, Honesdale awaits the finalization of regulations that will allow gas companies to enter the region and begin drilling.  This means that soon, homeowners will have to make a tough decision: reap the profits of allowing wells to permeate their properties, or preserve their backyards from the potentially damaging effects of drilling.

Dein’s honors thesis will help his fellow residents of the Delaware River Basin to make up their minds.

A dual-degree major in civil environmental engineering and German, Dein developed a graphic information system (GIS) analysis tool that allows users to see the effects of natural gas drilling on their properties.  Dein presented his work in March at the American Water Resources Spring Specialty Conference on GIS and Water Resources.  His adviser was David Brandes, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Dein’s GIS tool takes the form of a website, maps.lafayette.edu/drillRigor.  It’s not up and running yet, but Dein plans to launch the site May 19 for people to use for free.  Users can search for their properties, choose how many wells to place on the terrain, and run several analyses showing how the wells would impact the habitat, noise level, drinking water, aesthetics, and more.  Users can also use the site to determine the optimal location for the placement of a well on their property.

“There could be a lot of impacts, but the ones I’m focusing on are the ones that would be most significant to the landowner,” says Dein.  “If you’re strategic about where you put the well pad, you can significantly reduce those impacts.”

He built the website from the ground up, taking on all of the coding himself (though he had some help from Information Technology Services when it came to setting up a server).  He says he loved the theoretical aspects of the project, but was determined to keep it practical.  “I’ve always tried to remember the big picture,” he says.

At the conference, Dein was delighted to find that scientists, engineers, and other students were excited about his project, asking him for the web address and the date the website would be ready to use.  He enjoyed seeing what other students were up to, and was especially pumped about getting a taste of New Orleans, where the conference was located.

A member of the crew team and captain of the ski club during his time at Lafayette, Dein will head to New York City next year to be a civil engineer.  He’s certain he’ll use what he’s learned to take on new challenges.

“Every project that I’m working on, I’m always pulling those experiences into new projects,” he says.

Click here for the source article.

Michael Haas ’13, Allen Ward ’12, and Jessica Shiarella ’12 are the three young entrepreneurs behind Centsless, a start-up company that aims to give college students a way to borrow books, bicycles, tents, tools, electronics, or whatever they need from other students on the same campus—at no cost.

Haas created the concept early this year as part of a business class project he was doing with fellow student Ward for Professor Lynnette Claire’s entrepreneurship class. When the two students heard about the first Pacific NorthWest Economic Region Business Ideas Competition (PNWER-BIC), they worked frantically over one weekend, using music created by Marcus Chen ’12, to create a three-minute video portraying their business idea—and submitted it to the contest.

In April Centsless was chosen as one of four “best and brightest” business ideas by PNWER-BIC, winning Haas and Ward an invitation to the Entrepreneurial Boot Camp at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia.

“It quickly became less of a school project and more of a business venture,” Haas said. “We really want to make it happen.”

Haas and Ward, joined by Shiarella as their social media specialist, began running focus groups among Puget Sound students to see if their idea would fly. The reaction was enthusiastic.

“What you have on any campus is a surplus of needs, with a shortage of goods,” Ward said. “We intend to be the bridge between those.”

The three partners began designing a Web-based system in which students can scroll through items that are available for borrowing on campus, or else post their own items. Borrowers and lenders contact each other via the website and then meet in person to exchange the goods. Lenders set sums that have to be paid if an item is lost or damaged, and both lenders and borrowers allot each other “karma points” based on how well the transaction went.

The system will initially work on an “honor code” and an understanding that students on a small campus would not wish to sully their reputation. Students need a Puget Sound email address to access the site. At a later stage other security may be incorporated. Centsless also will use the Facebook tactic of creating “packs” of friends who can view each others’ borrowing and lending activities.

“People are interested in this because it’s bringing people together face-to-face, and because it’s all about people doing good for other people,” Shiarella said.

Chief Executive Michael Haas, Chief Operating Officer Allen Ward, and Social Media Specialist Jessica Shiarella are currently working on the Centsless website and expect to have it running before the fall term. They also are looking at fundraising options. Eventually they hope to have small sponsor ads on each listing to generate ongoing revenue.

Though Shiarella graduates this May and Ward next fall, the three students say they will all remain dedicated to Centsless. They point out they know their “customers” all too well, and they have faith in their marketplace. As Shiarella comments:

“As college students we are looking for every deal we can get. This idea is taking that concept to a whole other level.”

Click here for the source article.

Traveling to six countries on three continents, Shayla Alamino ’12, Aislinn Betancourt ’12, Kory Eylmann ’12, Jane Lombardi ’11, Nic Ramos-Flores ’12, and Ian Wallace ’12 will spend time in host countries teaching English as a foreign language and fostering mutual understanding between people of the United States and other countries.

Since receiving its first Fulbright Award in 1951, Rollins has produced a total of 42 Fulbright Scholars (17 of whom have been named since 2005).

Established in 1946, the Fulbright Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and is the largest U.S. international exchange program offering opportunities for students, scholars, and professionals to pursue international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and teaching in elementary and secondary schools worldwide. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The Program operates in over 155 countries worldwide.

· Shayla Alamino ’12 (Thailand) – Alamino views the scholarship as an opportunity to immerse herself in an entirely new culture while challenging her train of critical and imaginative skills through teaching. The theater arts major also looks forward to applying her performance background to the teaching process.

· Aislinn Betancourt ’12 (Malaysia) – When not teaching, Betancourt—a religious studies major and Jewish studies minor—plans to use the time in Malaysia to learn more about the country’s religious practices, focusing primarily on its three major religious groups—Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

· Kory Eylmann ’12 (Germany) – During his first year at Rollins, Eylmann became immersed in the German language and its culture as part of his German RCC course. Since then, the international business major and German minor has also spent six months studying abroad in Germany.

· Jane Lombardi ’11 (Mexico) – A Spanish and Latin American and Caribbean studies double major, Lombardi views her assistantship as an opportunity to facilitate mutual understanding while promoting a stronger relationship between the U.S. and Mexico.

· Nic Ramos-Flores ’12 (Korea) – A Hispanic-American fluent in English and Spanish, Ramos-Flores is excited about the opportunity to travel somewhere he’s never been, experience a culture about which he knows little, and learn a new language.

· Ian Wallace ’12 (Nepal) – An international relations major and Asian studies minor, Wallace hopes to learn some of the language, Nepali, and to build upon the work he participated in while visiting Nepal as part of a field study trip in 2010.

The piece notes, “As Jeffrey McCall, a communications professor at DePauw University, concluded: ‘Regular broadcast television is just not that essential in the lives of many young adults.’ ”

You’ll find the complete text at the Times‘ website (a subscription may be required to access content).

Professor McCall is a 1976 graduate of DePauw.  The author of Viewer Discretion Advised: Taking Control of Mass Media Influences, he is frequently called upon by major news outlets to discuss media matters and has been quoted in more than 100 newspapers.

Read his recent newspaper op-ed on the increasingly commercial messages airing on public television stations.

Kinvolved co-founders (L-R) Barrie Charney-Golden, Alexandra Meis, and Miriam Altman, New York University graduate students, at the awards ceremony.

A team comprised of Alex Meis ’08, Miriam Altman, and Barrie Charney Golden won the inaugural National Invitational Public Policy Challenge April 22 at the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia. The $15,000 award, sponsored by the Fels Institute of Government, University of Pennsylvania, was presented to this team from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service for its proposal, called Kinvolved.

The proposal details a mobile app to empower caregivers of students in the New York City Department of Education with timely student attendance information to ensure that all children are present in school all day, every day.

Meis, who is completing her first year studying health policy in the master of public administration program at New York University, explained that Kinvolved’s mission is to engage at least one family member or role model in the education of every child by facilitating basic communication and information sharing. Kinvolved earlier in the year won the BeMyApp Global Mobile App Competition.

“Our first product is a system that aims to increase school attendance, particularly in low-income, urban communities, by both streamlining the attendance-taking process for teachers and engaging parents through simple, routine attendance notifications,” says Meis, who is also parent coordinator for Bronx Lebanon Hospital.

A prototype for Kinvolved will be implemented and tested in five schools in the New York City Department of Education during summer school 2012.

A psychology graduate, Meis credits her experience at Lafayette as the foundation for her current success.

“Taking courses in psychology, American studies, anthropology and sociology, Spanish, and more gave me exposure to many areas of academics that all prove useful today. I learned how to embrace curiosity by taking courses out of my comfort zone; I learned how to push my limits by researching and writing an independent study on psychoneuroimmunology under the guidance of Professor Alan Childs, who also helped me obtain a research internship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center,” she says.

Meis particularly noted that a course taught by Caroline Lee, assistant professor of anthropology and sociology, expanded her view of poverty in American society, which led to her “current efforts to engage the low-income community in the New York City Department of Education by using technology to promote academic outcomes.”

She noted other faculty and staff who were influential, including Jamila Bookwala, Robert Allan, and John Shaw of the psychology department; Debbie Byrd, associate professor of English, with whom she took Women’s studies courses and who wrote her graduate school recommendation letter; and Nanette Cooley, associate director, career services, who provided “much guidance and support.”

The Public Policy Challenge is a student-led, public policy competition for undergraduate and graduate students from invited universities across the country. Each team presents a policy proposal or civic campaign to address an issue specific to its university’s community, with topics including education, environment, and health care.

Click here for the source article.

“I was inspired to create my own languages and study as many others as possible, both real and constructed,” Antetomaso recalls. “I experimented with learning ASL, Esperanto, Finnish, German, Greek, Italian, Klingon, Korean, Latin, and even Xhosa. Language created a doorway between worlds, allowing me to step through into completely different cultures.”

A doorway to another new culture will open for Antetomaso this fall, when she heads to the Republic of Estonia as a Fulbright Scholar. The Wheaton College senior from Woburn, Mass., a double major in linguistics and Russian studies, plans to study and conduct research on language at the University of Tartu.

Antetomaso developed an interest in linguistics as a high school student, when she took a course in the subject at MIT. She chose Wheaton in part for its wide offerings in world languages, though she knew the college had no linguistics major. Then a friend told her about an English professor, Michael Drout, who “was always talking about linguistics in class.”

“On a whim I went to talk with him,” she says, “and he was really supportive of the idea” of developing an independent major in linguistics.

With Drout’s guidance, Antetomaso built the major with courses from several departments—English, Computer Science, Psychology and Anthropology—plus linguistics courses at Brown University.

The University of Tartu, where she will work and study, is one of the world’s foremost centers for linguistics research, and its Department of Estonian Language Studies is the leading department of its kind. Antetomaso is intrigued by Estonian, which, like Finnish and Hungarian, is a Finno-Ugric language.

“These languages are significantly different from most other European languages,” says Antetomaso. “They are generally agglutinative languages, which means that things like tense, number, location and speaker can be indicated by an ending tacked onto the word.” (For instance, in Finnish, “istua” means “to sit down,” while “istahtaisinkohan” means “I wonder if I should sit down for a while.”)

In her Fulbright research, Antetomaso will employ natural-language processing, a technique that uses computers to process, understand, and output human language and which has applications to technology such as speech-recognition software, text-to-speech programs and machine translation. Antetomoso will examine how English-based language-processing algorithms work on Estonian texts, and vice versa, with the goals of studying the structural differences between the two languages and also developing “language-independent” algorithms.

“I’ve worked with a lot of language-processing tools at Wheaton,” she says, “tools that cluster similar texts, or parse speech into phonemes, but these tools all presuppose that you’re using them on English data sets.” Language-independent algorithms, on the other hand, are universal; they work with many different languages.

Antetomaso’s studies at Wheaton have opened up many other opportunities. She attended the European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information in Copenhagen and has worked for two years as a research assistant to Professor Tom Armstrong (Computer Science). In 2011 the pair co-authored a paper and presented it at the International Conference on Development and Learning in Frankfurt, Germany. Antetomaso also completed a senior honor’s thesis based on her own linguistics research.

Click here for the source article.

At #90 on the IEDC list and headlined “Pigskin Pageantry Doesn’t Get Any Better,” the notation reads, “The annual battle for the Monon Bell, between DePauw University, in Greencastle, and Wabash College, in Crawfordsville, is one of the oldest football rivalries in the nation.”

Access the item here, or see the complete list.

The series began in 1890. After 118 gridiron battles between DePauw and Wabash, the men from Crawfordsville lead the all-time series, 56-53-9, while the rivalry is tied since the Monon Bell was introduced as the victor’s prize in 1932, 37-37-6. [Download Video: "Ballad of the Monon Bell - 2007 Version" - 10,419kb] [Download Audio: "Ballad of the Monon Bell - Stereo" - 2514kb]

Access DePauw’s Monon Bell Web page here.

A complete roster of “Monon Memories” — 118 video highlights of all the past games — can be found here.

Fourteen Monon Bell Classics are available on DVD.  Details can be found in this article (at left: image from 1916 DePauw-Wabash game)

Voted Indiana’s “best sports rivalry” by visitors to ESPN.com, the Monon Bell Classic has been televised by ABC and ESPN2 and has been the subject of features in Sports Illustrated and USA Today and on Charles Kuralt’s CBS Sunday Morning. The annual DePauw-Wabash clash is also detailed in Rites of Autumn: The Story of College Football, a book by Richard Whittingham. The game is seen on national television each year via HDNet.

Johnson is the fifth member of the DePauw community to receive a Fulbright award this spring, joining four current seniors. Sam Holley-Kline will conduct anthropological field research in Mexico in a project, “Ancient Pyramids, Modern Populations: Totonac Perspectives on El Tajín.” English Teaching Assistant grants will send Kara L. Bischak to India, Stewart E. Jones to Malaysia and Case M. Naziger to South Korea.

“Modern Western societies typically regard emotion as a private aspect of the self,” Johnson wrote in his Fulbright application. “Yet for centuries emotion was understood as a social phenomenon which depended on a public exchange with others. Although universally felt, emotion is invariably mediated by the cultural politics, mores, and values of particular societies. My research centers on the multifaceted role of emotion in the social spaces of 16th and 17th century Spain. By examining dramatic manuscripts and historical documents, I hope to show how the expression of affect was molded by various public discourses and broadly valued both as a political tool and cultural commodity.”

Johnson was a Romance Languages major and European Studies minor at DePauw, and spent a semester abroad in Barcelona, Spain. After graduation, he spent a year in Madrid and then received his master’s degree in Spanish from Middlebury College in 2006. He is working toward his Ph.D. in Spanish Literature at the University of California, Irvine, where he is currently conducting research and writing his dissertation on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish literature and culture and the author Miguel de Cervantes. He’s also participated in the Modern Language department’s Servicio en las Américas program, serving as its Spanish language instructor for the past five summers (2007-2011) and has accompanied faculty members, student leaders, and first-year DePauw students on international service trips to Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Peru.

“Although I grew up in a small farming community in rural Indiana, I was fortunate enough to have a high school Spanish teacher who instilled in me a profound interest in foreign languages and cultures,” Johnson wrote. “Eager to feed this growing passion, I volunteered with a local literacy program to teach English to members of the Spanish-speaking immigrant population. I had found my calling: building solidarity and fostering cross-cultural understanding through direct service and community engagement.”

His studies at DePauw and volunteer work — including leading an after-school Spanish program, tutoring elementary and high school students who were learning English as a second language, and service at a homeless shelter — “made me even more attuned to the racial and economic inequalities suffered by immigrant populations and other marginalized groups.” He added, “I am still driven by many of the same goals which inspired me back in that tiny Indiana high school Spanish classroom. Yet my perspective has been infinitely expanded by the opportunities — local and global — that I have been given to engage with people of diverse backgrounds through the shared medium of Spanish.”

According to Johnson, “My current research on the cultural, political, and aesthetic representations of emotion in early modern Spain endows the often impersonal and solitary task of research with a distinctly human element. It also reflects a deep emotional investment in the social issues that have shaped my intellectual and professional commitments. A Fulbright Fellowship will empower me to channel these commitments even more into my research, teaching, and community engagement and to reconcile my thirst for knowledge with an equally strong desire to share it with others.”

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program competition is the largest American international exchange program offering opportunities for students and young professionals to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and teaching in elementary and secondary schools worldwide. It currently awards approximately 1,600 grants annually in all fields of study, and operates in approximately 130 countries worldwide.

Fulbright full grants generally provide funding for round-trip travel, maintenance for one academic year, health and accident insurance and full or partial tuition.

Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided approximately 310,000 participants, chosen for their leadership potential, with the opportunity to observe each others’ political, economic and cultural institutions, exchange ideas, and embark on joint ventures of importance to the general welfare of the world’s inhabitants. Learn more by clicking here.

DePauw University is listed among the “Top Producers of Fulbright Awards for U.S. Students, 2011-12″ in the Chronicle of Higher Education. DePauw is the only bachelor’s institution in the state of Indiana to appear on this year’s list and was also cited as one of the USA’s top producers of Fulbright Fellows in the publication’s 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006 listings.

See the names of DePauw’s Fulbright recipients here or visit the University’s Fulbright page.

DePauw students and alumni who are interested in applying for Fulbright Awards may contact David N. Gellman, associate professor of history, or Marion “Marnie” McInnes, professor of English and women’s studies and director of nationally competitive scholarships.

Just a few months ago, Lewis & Clark professor of education Zaher Wahab was asked to take on a nearly impossible assignment—come to Kabul immediately and work with the deputy minister of education to revise Afghanistan’s literacy plan.

In Afghanistan, 70 percent of men and 90 percent of women, including Wahab’s own mother and three sisters, are illiterate. His one-year UNESCO appointment involves assessing the current literacy plan—goals, curriculum, materials, and training protocols—and creating a new, achievable version. As part of the job, Wahab travels the country to observe school practices.

Despite the personal risk, Wahab accepted the special assignment without hesitation. Former student Stephan Morris M.A.T. ’10 believes that if anyone can bring literacy to Afghanistan, it’s Wahab.

“He inspired me to be not only a better teacher, but a better thinker and a better citizen,” Morris said. “He is so driven and so motivated to make the world better for his people.”

As Wahab told the Oregonian, “I don’t care if I don’t see the utopia. The struggle for change must and will go on, and we must have hope and faith for a better day.”

Learn more about Zaher Wahab’s experiences in Afghanistan in this Oregonian article and in this profile written by Dan Sadowsky and originally published in the summer 2009 issue of the Chronicle.

Click here for the source article.

Gender and women’s study professor Chris Guzaitis shocked everyone – including herself – when she entered the Motley Coffeehouse on April 27 and found a party in her honor. Expected through another entrance, Guzaitis’ arrival brought cheers and applause from students, faculty, staff, and alumnae as she was quickly ushered on stage and crowned the 2011-2012 Professor of the Year.

“I was completely shocked,” says Guzaitis of the festivities, which included a bouquet of flowers, and ceremonial wand, and her own plush squirrel nicknamed “The Nutty Professor.” “It was all a bit surreal and wonderful. I am so, so grateful; this is a wonderful honor.”

Guzaitis joins a select pantheon of faculty with her nomination. Started in 2008, Professor of the Year annually celebrates one faculty member as voted on by Scripps students; past winners include Matt Delmont, Winston Ou, Marina Perez de Mendiola, and Tony Crowley.

Students gathered at the event were effusive in their praise of professor Guzaitis. “I’ve seen her interact with students of all ages, from ninth and tenth graders in the Scripps College Academy to alumnae from all walks of life,” says Shane Zackery ’14. “There isn’t anyone she can’t motivate through her wit and huge breadth of knowledge.”

“Chris is a wonderful professor and has been a continual source of guidance, support, and knowledge for me,” says Lillian Estenson ’12. “She took extremely challenging queer and feminist theories, which I had previously been intimidated by, and helped me understand them. By the end of her class, I felt confident enough to bring these theories up in casual conversations.”

“I see the classroom as a space of possibility and community,” Guzaitis says. “I teach material I really love, so being able to share that with students and have them also grow passionate about issues related to feminism, gender, and sexuality is exciting for me.”

Click here for the source article.

Strauss’ two-year-long project will examine how unemployed men and women from different classes and ethnic groups are coping with unemployment and what they think about their own futures and the future of the country.

“With approximately one in 12 Americans out of work, the views of the unemployed about the causes of their difficulties and possible solutions for it are an important part of contemporary US culture and politics,” Strauss said.

The NSF is an independent US government agency responsible for promoting science and engineering through research programs and education.

The Wenner-Gren Foundation supports anthropological research into humanity’s biological and cultural origins, development and variation, and fosters the creation of an international community of research scholars in anthropology.

Click here for the source article.

Gabby Arenge ’14 will use a $10,000 grant from the Davis Projects for Peace program to implement an art mentorship program to serve children from Kibera, a large slum in Nairobi, Kenya.

Gabby Arenge ’14 has long had a passion for art therapy. Now, she has a chance to put her passion into practice – 8,000 miles away.

In early June, weeks of careful planning, budgeting and organizing will come to fruition half-way around the world as Arenge establishes an art mentorship program in Nairobi, Kenya.

“I termed it a ‘creative safe space,’” explained Arenge, a psychology major and art minor. “There will be couches and art supplies and food. Our first project will be working together with the kids to paint a mural on one of the walls.”

Arenge is the winner of a $10,000 grant from the Davis Projects for Peace program. With the funding, she plans to use art to promote peace among street youth in an urban area of Kenya stricken by harsh poverty.

“Between 250,000 – 300,000 children work on the streets across Kenya, with more than 60,000 in Nairobi alone,” Arenge wrote in her project proposal, adding that Nairobi is home to one of the largest slums in the world, and it sits right next to the city’s most metropolitan area.

It’s that unique contrast that drew Arenge to Nairobi.

“Children can get lost in that environment,” she said. “They can get swept up by drugs or prostitution.”

Arenge plans to use art – and the relationships a shared love of art can foster – to keep that from happening.

“I think art will be a way for them to express themselves and work through all the trauma and anxiety they may have experienced in their lives,” she said.

Arenge plans for the project to culminate in a gallery exhibit of the students’ work which could be posted online in order to generate donations for the program.

But Arenge says the program she is designing is just as much about mentorship. She is partnering with two non-profits in Kenya, the Undugu Basic Education Programme, an established organization which educates Kenyan street children, and Carolina for Kibera, an organization which implements projects for street youth, to help identify and organize mentors for the children.

“I realized how big a role mentors played in my life and my growth. There’s something extremely valuable in that,” she said. “I was always very close with my teachers, and my relationships with them were very important in influencing who I am now. These children don’t have teachers – many don’t even have parents – so I hope the mentor program will give them those sorts of relationships.

“The art aspect of the project can promote inner peace through expression, and the mentorship program can guide and empower the children from the outside,” she added.

This will not be Arenge’s first time working with young children. She is currently part of Big Brothers Big Sisters, and acts as an older sibling for a young girl right here in New London. She’s even used the program to test out some ideas she’s had for Nairobi. “Our second project with the Nairobi children will be a scrapbook that they use to document the relationship with their mentors. I tried this out with my current mentee and it went great. It seems to really strengthen the relationship,” she said.

Arenge is a scholar in the College’s Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy, an interdisciplinary academic center in which students to take classes exploring contemporary issues and undertake an independent study that culminates in a senior research project. The Holleran Center’s Program in Community Action, known as “PICA,” has been a major source of inspiration for Arenge.

“PICA brings your perspective out of those set potential life paths. You don’t just have to be a doctor, nurse, lawyer, teacher, etc. You can have a broad impact in any number of ways. That’s what I’m interested in exploring,” she explained.

Arenge hopes to connect her senior research project with her Davis project in some way, but for now she is concentrating on preparing herself for the inevitable culture shock.

“I’m going into a culture I only know through Internet research,” she said. “It’s going to be challenging, but anything worthwhile is.”

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Last spring, two Connecticut College alumni on assignment with Teach for America brought their students to campus.

Four graduating seniors have been asked to participate in Teach for America this year, placing the College among top Teach for America schools.

The four soon-to-be graduates join the more than 40 Connecticut College alumni who have worked to eliminate educational injustices by teaching in low-income communities across the country through Teach for America.

Brenner Green ’12, a psychology major, will teach secondary special education in the Las Vegas Valley. He applied to Teach for America hoping to help gay students struggling with their own identity issues.

“When I was growing up, my education never included a curriculum that met my needs as a gay young adult. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history and culture were not ever part of my school’s curriculum, making it hard for me to come out and accept myself as gay,” he says.

Through teaching, Green hopes he will be able to provide students from diverse backgrounds with a well-rounded education that “that recognizes and accepts their unique identities.”

Teach for America selects the nation’s most promising future leaders to serve in 43 regions across the country. Isaac Hancock ’12, who studied sociology and American studies with a concentration in race and ethnicity, plans to bring what he has learned at Connecticut College to the fight against inequality.

“Teach for America offers me the opportunity to both exercise my classroom knowledge of race, class, gender and sexuality based inequality and work in the field that is best able to remedy marginalization,” he says.

Hancock will work in New York City at Teach for America partnered schools serving nearly all black or Latino students. In his final weeks on campus, he says he is looking forward to helping his students succeed through high school and beyond to their own college graduations.

“I am ultimately basing my success on the success of my students. Whatever I get out of the program is inconsequential if my students are not equipped to take on the challenges ahead of them,” said Hancock.

Emily Pfannenstiel ’12, a psychology and art double-major, will be teaching preschool in the San Francisco Bay area next year. Pfannenstiel has worked with Teach for America throughout her senior year as a campus campaign coordinator helping to promote the organization’s mission to fellow students.

Pfannenstiel has been interested in working with children since she first started college and has given her time to several educational programs, including Jumpstart, Big Brothers Big Sisters and Connecticut College’s Project Kids, Books and Athletics.

“For me, participating in Teach for America is about taking the time to give back by helping students realize their potential. For the next two years, my time and attention will be given solely to my students! I could not be more excited for this opportunity. It is truly an honor.”

Jeff Baird ’12, an English and American studies double major, always knew he wanted to be a teacher. Rather than heading straight to graduate school, he applied for a position with Teach for America because he felt strongly about the program’s commitment to promoting social change while bridging the achievement gap.

Baird will begin teaching next fall at Success Academy Middle School in Harlem. “One of the aspects of working for Teach for America that I’m looking forward to most is gaining a network of peers with a similar goal. It’s crucial to have that support network when going into something so new and challenging,” he says.

Since 1990, nearly 33,000 recent graduates have joined Teach for America. As corps members and alumni, they have reached more than 3 million students across 43 urban and rural communities, founded dozens of high-performing schools, led school districts and charter management organizations, and helped pass important education legislation. In 2011, Teach for America organization was named one of Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.”

Before being asked to join the organization, all applicants must undergo a lengthy interview process. During the course of each participant’s two-year commitment, Teach for America requires all members to complete a master’s degree in education.

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