Archives for March 2014

College Scholars on Social Media

March 30, 2014 by bharve20

College Scholars on Social Media

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2013 Graduates at the Spring Reception. Left to Right: McCall Sarrett, Cornelia Overton, Ellis Greer, Blair Kuykendall, Hannah Durick, Paolo Vignali, Ryan Roberts, Elliot Bertasi, Director Jeffrey Kovac, Marissa Landis. Not pictured: Matthew Dillon.

College Scholars is establishing a presence on social media. We now have a Facebook page, “University of Tennessee College Scholars Program,” where we post news and photos about the program. You can “like” us and keep informed. We have also established a members-only group on LinkedIn (LinkedIn.com). All alumni for whom we had an e-mail address have been invited to join. If you have not yet joined, we encourage you to do so. As of this writing, 117 alumni and current students are part of this group and the discussions are lively. The group was established to allow alumni to connect with each other and to allow them to connect with current students and, as appropriate, serve as mentors. If you have not received an invitation, please send an e-mail message to scholars@utk.edu and you will receive one. If you are not part of LinkedIn, it is easy to join.

To give you a taste of what you can learn by joining the LinkedIn group, here are a few selected alumni notes posted there.

Fisher Neal (2006) received the MFA from Yale School of Drama and is a co-founder of the Old Sound Room in New York City. The Old Sound Room “makes live experiential performance incorporating music, movement, and the dynamic adaptation of classical & modern texts.”

Nathan Oesch (2000) is in the final year of doctoral program in experimental psychology at Oxford where he is continuing research in language evolution.

For the past several years Glenn Morgan (1976) has been Post Producer (overseeing the editors) on Project Runway, which has received several Emmy nominations during its twelve years on the air.

Jay Raman (1997) has been a Foreign Service since 2002. He has been posted abroad in the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Guatemala, and Ecuador, primarily working as a spokesman and on cultural programs. He has recently returned to the Washington, DC area to study Khmer in preparation for his next assignment in Cambodia.

After earning the B.A. in College Scholars in 1997, Eugene Burns stayed on at UT and received a Ph.D. in microbiology. He is currently Associate Professor of Biology at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, OH.

Paige Graham (1999) earned the Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and is currently President of Graham Consulting Group and on the faculty of the University of the Rockies in Colorado Springs, CO.

Current College Scholars Travel the World

March 30, 2014 by bharve20

Current College Scholars Travel the World

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Erin Grimson spent her Spring 2013 semester living and working in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, France. Attending art history and photography classes in the historic Marais district, Erin left France with dozens of rolls of film and a fresh perspective for her senior thesis. Her College Scholars career will culminate in April 2014 with an exhibition consisting of her musings and photographs from France.

After spending six weeks in Shenyang, China, completing soil science research at the Institute of Applied Ecology, Kenna Rewcastle brought back much more than just a better understanding of soil respiration and conservation tillage practices.

Shortly after landing at the Shenyang Aiport, Rewcastle attended a China-US joint workshop on the Biogeochemistry of Carbon and Nitrogen, at which UT College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources professors shared the conference’s program with many Chinese scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shenyang Agricultural University. The underlying theme for the conference was always clear: heightened collaboration between American and Chinese scientists will produce benefits in the form of a scientific relationship between two cultures that, together, can tackle global problems and research questions that face us all. This same motif of collaboration and cultural immersion became interwoven in Rewcastle’s Chinese experience.

While spending late nights in the Institute’s laboratory monitoring soil respiration curves with several graduate student collaborators, Kenna was struck not by cultural differences, but by how overwhelmingly similar her life, values, and aspirations were to that of her Chinese mentors. Qin Qin and Qiufeng Xu, both graduate students at the Institute of Applied Ecology, taught Rewcastle various techniques used in soil science research, but also gave Kenna insight into how their Chinese culture and education informed their research. “The Chinese graduate students welcomed me into their labs, their culture, and their lives. The patience and generosity that I was shown will forever stand as a model for me as I pursue opportunities for intercultural collaboration in the future,” said Rewcastle.

Rewcastle’s six weeks in China culminated with a formal presentation of her research and a short lecture on her life as an undergraduate in the US, which was given to the graduate students involved in similar research projects at the Institute of Applied Ecology.

In late summer 2013, Shawana Davis studied abroad in Cape Town, South Africa under the leadership of Dr. Amadou Sall of the Africana Studies Department. In this five week course, International Civic Engagement: Social Justice, Poverty and HIV, Shawana studied post- apartheid South Africa. The students visited three poverty-stricken townships: Langa (the oldest township in Cape Town), Guguletu, and Khayelitsha. During four days in Langa they built a vegetable garden and a bookshelf for Nomonde Pre-School headed by Mama Lumka. Shawana enjoyed spending time with the children. Besides visiting townships, the students visited the Cape of Good Hope, Lion’s Head Mountain, Slave Lodge Museum (where slaves were kept when they arrived in Cape Town), and the District Six Museum, which is housed in the church that was the last remaining building after District Six of Cape Town was demolished and inhabitants were forcibly removed in the 1970’s during the apartheid regime. They also visited Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in jail, and the place where Mandela gave his first public speech in 1990 after being released, Cape Town’s City Hall.

During the summer of 2013 Brianna Rader participated in Yale University’s Bioethics Summer Institute which was an amazing opportunity. The program was international and for undergraduates, graduates, and professionals, so the learning community was extremely diverse. The participants wrestled with questions of healthcare allocation, public health ethics, and care for the dying. They visited the first hospice in America, Monsanto’s Research facility, and the Hastings Center. Brianna’s summer project was on America’s flawed pre-med education system. She was able to interview deans of different medical schools and work in a bioethics analysis. New Haven had character, but it helped that New York City was a short train ride away. She had a wonderful summer with many new international friends.

2013 Graduates

March 30, 2014 by bharve20

2013 Graduates

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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

From the Director

March 30, 2014 by bharve20

From the Director

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College Scholars is celebrating its 40th anniversary as the original and most distinguished honors program at UT. We have 700 alumni around the country and 35 current scholars pursuing an interesting and eclectic variety of programs. To commemorate this milestone, we have initiated several projects that are described in more detail elsewhere in this newsletter.

One of those projects is a 40th Anniversary History. Doing the research for this history has given me a deep appreciation for how remarkable College Scholars is. As one of the current Scholars commented, we offer the best possible gift to students: freedom. As I learn more about our alumni and their subsequent careers, I realize that College Scholars have taken that freedom and used it in amazing ways. As I work with the current scholars to help them realize their own dreams, I see greatness in the making.

In two years as Director of College Scholars I have come to realize that I have the best job at the University of Tennessee because I have regular contact with a creative and dedicated group of students. We have described some of their accomplishments in this newsletter but it is impossible to capture the energy that I experience when we meet for the weekly seminar.

Please keep in touch through our LinkedIn group or by sending updates by e-mail, or even through the postal service.

Jeffrey Kovac
Professor of Chemistry
Director of College Scholars
Department of Chemistry
1420 Circle Drive
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-1600