Category: Profiles of Engagement

The latest post in our “Profiles of Engagement” series features Nathaniel Van Wienen ’15, a program director for the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP).

During an immunology course, Emily Matsuda worked on a project about celiac disease, an experience that inspired her to write and publish a children’s book. Learn more about her project in our latest Profile of Engagement….

Lindsey Weber ’16, a program director and Alternative Spring Break trip leader, talks about the Adopt-a-Grandparent program and how it benefits both the student volunteers and their “buddies” in the community.

Beret Fitzgerald talks about her experiences working with HealthFinders Collaborative, a non-profit that offers care and advocacy for people who are uninsured or underinsured in Rice County.

French and Francophone Studies professor Cherif Keita has spent more than a decade of his life researching the life of John Dube (1871-1946), the first president of South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC). “When I visited South Africa for the first time in January 1999,” Keita said,“I realized the extent to which Apartheid, as the most violent form of European colonialism, had robbed Africans of their sense of pride and self-worth.” For this reason, Keita said, he turned to film-making “to dig into the past and bring to Africans of today the models of positive leadership that, as a people, we are sorely lacking right now on the continent.”

Nancy Wilkie, William H. Laird Professor of Classics, Anthropology and the Liberal Arts and co-coordinator of the Archaeology Concentration at Carleton College, has been teaching at Carleton since 1974. She also served as President of the Archaeological Institute of America from 1998-2002 and currently is an Honorary President of that organization.
Her archaeological career began in 1968, when she helped to survey the region around the Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Greece and then excavated at the site of Nichoria from 1969-1975. She also has worked in the region of Delphi and Lamia in Greece, conducted excavations in the Nile Delta of Egypt, and directed an archaeological survey in Grevena, Southwest Macedonia, Greece in all of which many Carleton students were able to participate.

I initially became involved with the CCCE my freshman year as a volunteer with Uplift, a tutoring program focused primarily on helping Somali youth at Fairbault Middle School. We travel to Fairbault to help mostly ELL students with their homework and provide a fun and educational after school space. I became a program director for Uplift my sophomore year and am still one today. I started working as both the One Time Events Coordinator and the Political Engagement Coordinator in the CCCE this fall. The One Time Events portion of my job includes responding to requests from the community members for volunteers and helping student run programs including Carls-Against-Cancer, Books for Africa, and the Red Cross.

“My students would write wonderful research papers,” remembers Biology professor Debby Walser-Kuntz. “But the problem was, I was their only audience.” As an undergraduate student, Prof. Walser-Kuntz…

Kate Adkins’s work on public health projects started in an unexpected way: tutoring. “I really wanted to be in the community,” the senior Biology major recalls…