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Current Scholars – Elliot Bertasi

September 3, 2012 by bharve20

Current Scholars – Elliot Bertasi

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Boren Scholarship – Elliot Bertasi

Senior Eliot Bertasi is the first College Scholar to hold a Boren Scholarship. Boren Scholarships provide funds to U.S. undergraduate students to study abroad in areas of the world that are critical to U.S. interests and underrepresented in study abroad, including Africa, Asia, Central & Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Elliot was admitted to College Scholars as a sophomore interested in studying governance, politics, and society in Africa, and in examining international relations between the US and African countries but has subsequently narrowed his study to eastern Africa, and in particular, northern Uganda. Elliot has now designed a senior project that examines the challenges of political and social post-conflict transformation, focusing on the relationship between the government and the community members in northern Uganda.

To begin his project, in the summer of 2011, Elliot studied abroad in northern Uganda with the Gulu Study and Service Abroad Program led by two University of Tennessee professors, Dr. Rosalind Hackett and Dr. Tricia Hepner. Determined to return to Uganda to conduct field research for his senior project, Elliot applied for the Boren Scholarship and to the School for International Training (SIT) program, Uganda: Post-Conflict Transformation in Gulu. Elliot was soon accepted to the SIT study abroad program in Uganda, and a few months later he received notice that he was to be one of the 2012 Boren Scholar recipients. The study abroad program is scheduled to last from September to December 2012.

Elliot spent the summer of 2012 in Uganda as a McClure Scholar, a program that offers UT students financial awards to support study/research/creative projects aimed at enhancing and promoting education for world responsibility. Elliot is the primary investigator for a research project which focuses on the challenges of post-conflict transformation in Uganda, and the role of political leaders and government programs in assisting war affected communities in the north to reach self-sustainability. His research mainly consists of interviewing civil servants, religious leaders, cultural leaders, community representatives, and beneficiaries to see how these government programs are working and also to examine the relationship between the local government and the community members.

As a Boren Scholar, Elliot will take classes in Gulu, Uganda, during the fall semester: Contextualizing Conflict in Northern Uganda, Post-Conflict Transformation, Acholi Language Study, and Research Methods and Ethics. His classes will be taught by various local academics, political leaders, religious leaders, war affected victims, and peace and conflict experts. Towards the end of the program the students will have several weeks to work on a self-designed Independent Study Project through which Elliot plans on continuing to work on his current and ongoing field research.

When Elliot returns to the United States in December, he will have one semester left at the University of Tennessee before graduation in May, 2013. After graduation, Elliot plans to move to Washington D.C. and work for a law firm dealing with international human rights or fulfill his Boren year of service by working for the Department of State. Elliot is then planning to apply to law school at Georgetown University, American University, or George Washington University. Elliot hopes to continue his studies abroad throughout law school and eventually pursue a career in international human rights law.

Current Scholars – Hannah Durick

September 3, 2012 by bharve20

Current Scholars – Hannah Durick

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Hannah Durick

Since summer 2011 Hannah Durick has delved into the study of anthropological perspectives on international human rights, peace and conflict studies. In the summer of 2012 she traveled with Dr. Rosalind I. J. Hackett, her College Scholars mentor Dr. Tricia Hepner and her husband Dr. Randall Hepner to Northern Uganda with UT’s Gulu Service and Study Abroad Program. The program seasons students to critically engage with post-conflict development and peacebuilding initiatives in a region shaken by two decades of armed conflict. They traveled from Kampala to Gulu where they took courses at Gulu’s Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies, followed by four week internships. Hannah interned with the The Centre for Reparations and Rehabilitation (CRR). Spearheaded by four Ugandan female lawyers, CRR is a locally operated and externally funded non-governmental organization in Gulu that addresses two integral components of the post-conflict environment: land disputes, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and pervasive domestic violence. Although their time was short, it articulated the nuanced challenges of post-conflict development wrought by decades of humanitarian and military interventions, bare-faced violence, structural violence, displacement and trauma in a way that cannot be captured in a lecture or a book.

2012 Graduate Britta Johnson

September 3, 2012 by bharve20

2012 Graduate Britta Johnson

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Britta Johnson was the Outstanding Graduate in College Scholars in 2012. Britta’s concentration was Mathematical and Chemical Physics. As a freshman, Britta won the C. W. Keenan Prize given to the best student in Honors General Chemistry and in 2011 she was one of three UTK students to be awarded the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship. Britta began research in computational quantum chemistry with Professor R. J. Hinde in the Department of Chemistry as a freshman. Her work has resulted in one peer-reviewed publication to date: B. Johnson and R. J. Hinde, “Pairwise Additive Model for the He-MgO(100) Interaction,” Journal of Physical Chemistry A, 2011, 115, 7112-7119. During the summers Britta worked as a resident advisor for the Governor’s School for the Sciences and Engineering while carrying on research in chemistry or mathematics. In the fall of 2012 Britta began graduate study in theoretical chemistry at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

2012 Graduates

September 3, 2012 by bharve20

2012 Graduates

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Luke Waring was one of the Top Collegiate Scholars in the College of Arts and Sciences. Luke’s concentration was religion and the environment with a pre-law interest. His senior project was directed by Dr. Sherry Cable of the Department of Sociology. Luke’s senior project was entitled “American Evangelical Christianity and Opposition to Environmentalism: Thematic Analysis of Resisting the Green Dragon and Semi-Structured Interviews.” During his years at UT, Luke has been involved in more worthwhile activities than we have room to list. Close to his senior project was his service on the Chancellor’s Committee on the Campus Environment. As a senior he was President of the Honors Ambassador Program and the Managing Editor for Humanities and Social Sciences for Pursuit, the Journal of Undergraduate Research. At the Chancellor’s Honors Banquet Luke received the Chancellor’s Citation for Extraordinary Academic Achievement. He graduated as top student in the College in the Humanities. Luke plans to attend law school.

Jayanni Webster was named one of the 2012 Torchbearers, the highest honor given to undergraduate students at the University of Tennessee. In 2011 Jayanni was selected to participate in PBS’s fiftieth-anniversary reenactment of the 1961 Freedom Rides. Her senior project, carried out under the direction of Dr. Rosalind Hackett of Religious Studies, was entitled “Peace Education and Its Discontents: An Evaluation of Youth Violence and Peace Programs in Northern Uganda. “ To pursue this research Jayanni has spent a significant amount of time in Uganda. On campus, she has been involved in Jazz for Justice, a non-profit organization that raises funds and awareness of the plight of war-affected youth in Northern Uganda. She has also been a leader in the UT student chapter of Amnesty International. One of the most dynamic College Scholars, Jayanni has been a significant figure at UTK. It has been said of her that “all of us on campus are richer because she is here.” After returning to Uganda this summer, she is now back in the USA, deciding which NGO (non-governmental organizatiotion) she will join.

Elizabeth Williams developed a concentration in Sociology and Policy in Education. Her senior project entitled “Educational Apartheid: The Dismantling and Resurrection of Educational Inequality in the US and South Africa, Studies in Critical Sociological Theory” was carried out under the direction of Dr. Bob Kronick. This project grew out of her experience in a service learning course in a local Title 1 Elementary School, work that she continued for the rest of her college career. She followed up with a summer internship at the Netter Center at the University of Pennsylvania, the premier program in the country for campus-community involvement, and a study-abroad program at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Elizabeth has been a tireless worker for educational equality wherever she goes. She once had to excuse herself from the weekly College Scholars Seminar because she was leading a group of 60 volunteers to local elementary schools. For the first step of her graduate career in educational policy, Elizabeth finally chose the Big Apple over Harvard and Penn; she is pursuing her master’s at Teacher’s College, Columbia University.

From the Director

September 3, 2012 by bharve20

From the Director

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I received my education at Reed College (B.A. Chemistry 1970) and Yale University (M. Phil 1972, Ph.D 1974 Theoretical Chemistry) and have become an interdisciplinary scholar in the true spirit of the College Scholars program. Over the years I have done scholarly work in chemistry, chemical education, philosophy and history. You can find more about my career and publications at http://www. chem.utk.edu/faculty/kovac.html. Being Director of College Scholars is a wonderful job because it allows me to work closely with some of the most talented and interesting students at the University of Tennessee.

Are there changes in store for College Scholars? Of course I will look for ways to improve an already excellent program, but my main focus in the immediate future is to raise the profile of College Scholars on campus so that every student who should be a College Scholar knows about the program. College Scholars must remain the premier honors program at the University of Tennessee which means that we need to continue to attract the best students, pair them with outstanding mentors, provide them with the support they need to achieve academic success and then publicize those successes.

Putting together this newsletter has been a real delight because I can highlight some of the remarkable accomplishments of our current scholars and also feature a few alumni who have gone on to interesting careers. I am eager to hear from alumni and would like to include your stories in a future newsletter. Please send me an e-mail at scholars@utk.edu, or write to this address:

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