Wheaton students win awards and national honors
March 26, 2008
Representing the broad diversity of scholarship and achievement on campus, a dozen Wheaton students have won awards and national honors this spring, including two seniors who have earned coveted Watson Fellowships for independent study abroad.
The students have won recognition for their scholarly work, proposed research and service projects, as well as achievements in the arts. They represent majors as diverse as anthropology, studio art, French studies, history, music and sociology; and their many interests include indigenous Zimbabwean music, documentary film making and teaching urban high school students about Civil Rights through a tour of the American South, to name a few.
Two seniors win Watson Fellowships
Wheaton seniors Jennifer Bombasaro-Brady and Ru-Shyan Yen are two of 50 college students nationwide selected to receive a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. The $25,000 award will support a year of travel and research for each student. Bombasaro-Brady plans to investigate the social significance of historical re-enactments; Yen will explore varied artistic techniques for creating batik.
The Thomas J. Watson Foundation awards 50 fellowships to college seniors of unusual promise for a year of independent exploration and travel outside the United States. (More)
Peace laurels
Thanks to the Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace initiative, Ann Kwan '09 and Kelly Maby '09 have each won $10,000 grants to promote world peace through projects to be undertaken this summer. Kwan will establish a handicrafts shop for a Cambodian non-profit, while Maby will take urban high school students on a tour of the American South to learn from Civil Rights leaders.
Their awards mark the second consecutive year that Wheaton students have won grants from the Davis Projects for Peace program. Kathryn Wasserman Davis started the program in celebration of her 100th birthday last year. Because of the program's success, Davis continued it for the summer of 2008. (More)
Award-winning anthropologists
Kara Schamell's senior thesis took the prize for the best undergraduate student paper at the 2008 Greater Boston Anthropology Consortium Student Conference, held recently at Brandeis University. Schamell '08 become interested in the mbira, or thumb piano, when she took the course "World Music," taught by Julie Searles, assistant professor of music. Schamell researched the meaning of the mbira in traditional Zimbabwean music as well as its contemporary uses in the World Music industry. The result was her prize-winning thesis paper, "When Sounds and Spirits Go Global: Mbira Musicianship Abroad." (More)
Also winning recognition at the conference were Ashley Smith '08 (anthropology and French studies), who won the prize for best student question, and Katherine Niemczyk '08 (anthropology and sociology), who won commendation for her entry in the new film category with her film trailer "Bearing Arms, Bearing Witness: Veterans Against the Iraq War."
Hitting high notes
Eight Wheaton voice students competed at the Song Festival of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing on March 1, and five of them came away with honors, including Alexander Grover '09 and Elizabeth McKay '08, who each won a first prize in their divisions. Joanne Mouradjian, assistant professor of music in performance, lauded all the students for their intensive preparation and focus, saying that they gave some of their best performances at the festival. (More)
