2013 Graduates
Ten College Scholars graduated in the spring and summer of 2013. The breadth of their interests and the quality of their senior projects demonstrate the continuing vigor of the program. Here are some highlights.
Blair West Kuykendall was named one of the 2013 Torchbearers and was a top graduate in the College of Arts and Sciences. A Haslam Scholar and a Baker Scholar, Blair served as Editor-in-chief of the Daily Beacon for 2 ½ years. During the summer of 2012 she was a student at the London School of Economics. Blair’s senior project conducted under the direction of Dr. Otis Stephens and Dr. Hemant Sharma was an analysis of the effectiveness of OECD economic regulation in the quest for ICESCR compliance. This past fall Blair began law school at Georgetown University.
Ellis Greer’s program in Costume Design for the Theatre culminated in a project in which she designed costumes for Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. After graduation, Ellis packed her bags and moved to Santa Fe where she was a stitching and wardrobe apprentice at the Santa Fe Opera. This fall she is a costume intern at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, DC. Ellis sent the following description of her summer in Santa Fe.
As a Stitching and Wardrobe Apprentice at the Santa Fe Opera, I got to see how an internationally renowned company produces some of the best opera in the world. I worked in a shop of about seventy professional costumers, and we created costumes for five large-scale operas: The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, The Marriage of Figaro, La Donna del Lago, La Traviata, and Oscar. I was very fortunate to be able to work as a member of the tailoring team for the first part of the summer, getting an unrivaled view into the world of creating and fitting beautiful menswear. Once the operas opened, the Apprentices worked as the wardrobe crew for all five shows. For The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, I was a dresser in the same dressing room as Kevin Burdette, a College Scholars alum himself, and a native of Knoxville. Mr. Burdette, a bass, sang the role of the powercrazed and scheming General Boum. I am very proud to have contributed to a wonderful season at the Santa Fe Opera, and I am very excited to see where my costume studies will take me next.
Both Hannah Durick and Elliot Bertasi participated in the Gulu and Study Abroad Program. They spent the summer and fall in Uganda taking courses and doing research for their senior projects which were carried out under the direction of Dr. Tricia Redeker Hepner. Both were featured in the Fall 2012 Newsletter. They focused on different aspects of post war redevelopment in Northern Uganda. Elliot was named the top graduate in College Scholars for 2013. He is currently employed as a Personnel Services Contractor at US Agency of International Development Bureau for Africa in Washington, D.C.
Matthew Dillon’s senior thesis was entitled “A False START: The Role of Ballistic Missile Defense in US-Russian Relations.” Matthew’s program also included extensive language study in both French and Russian.
Ryan Roberts spent the spring semester of 2013 as an intern in the office of an oral surgeon in Nashville and working on his senior project entitled “The Role of the Pediatrician in the Oral Health of a Child: A Survey of Tennessee Providers” under the direction of Dr. Paul Erwin of the Department of Public Health. This past fall, Ryan began dental school at UT Health Sciences Center in Memphis.
Cornelia Overton spent part of her senior year traveling through Anderson and Morgan counties surveying the attitudes of the local population on shale gas drilling, usually called fracking. This project was the culmination of her College Scholars program in environmental cultural anthropology. Over the summer Cornelia played in a band that toured all around the West, mostly in Montana.
In contrast, Marissa Landis spent her time in art galleries and talking with artists as she wrote her senior thesis on “Art History, Theory and Criticism.”
Many of the current College Scholars are interested in aspects of neuroscience. 2013 graduate, McCall Sarrett, did research in second language acquisition with Dr. Harriet Bowden of the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literature. McCall spent part of her junior year in Brazil improving her command of Portuguese. She is taking a year off from school working for Cruze Dairy Farm. She can be found at the Market Square Farmer’s Market in Knoxville on Saturday mornings serving the rich dairy products that the farm produces
Paolo Vignali served as the student assistant for College Scholars (“the management”) during the 2012-2103 academic year. His senior thesis was entitled “Pathology of the Blood: A history of chemotherapy and immunotherapy in the treatment of hematological malignancies.” Paolo is also taking a year off before going to medical school and working in a lab at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore