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Each year Carleton students have the opportunity to apply for a number of fellowships that allow them to follow their interests through projects completed over the summer or winter break. As always, this year’s applicants proposed a fascinating and exciting array of projects. The following is a summary of the selected proposals.

Class of 1963 Fellowships

Daria Kieffer ’13 is interested in how individual motivation and perception affects differential participation in a youth-led social and environmental justice initiative in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her research will focus on what motivates youth (ages 18-25) and how these motivations shape their experience.

Muira McCammon ’13 will be conducting independent research on nontraditional learning options for exceptionally young and gifted Americans. She plans to produce a guidebook for this group that will explain residential and non-residential undergraduate options for accelerated students.

Anna Morrison ’13 will travel to Detroit to examine how urban decay can provide an opportunity for innovation, equity and responsible redevelopment.By looking at specific cases, and bringing to bear demographic and other relevant information, she will examine how the urban form represents changing power dynamics and identities in Detroit.

Henry Rownd ’13 will travel to US amusement parks to view experimental 3D 360° films, 4D films and ride films. He will examine the extent to which these films provide a way to re-experience the earliest thrill of moving photographs as well as theorize how the 3D embodied experience acts as a virtual “ride.”

ENTS Summer Internships

Lindsay Guthrie received the Adelaide Matteson Service Award to pursue an internship with Real Food Challenge, working in Minnesota and the Midwest.

Claire Karban will intern with a Peruvian NGO called Grupo Yanapai, working with rural farming communities in the Peruvian highlands.

Elicia Cousins will work in Japan with the National Network of Parents to Protect Children from Radiation.

Gregory Phillips received the internship with Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) in Boulder, Colorado to work under the direction of RMIs senior team, on a major project to research the development of a technically and economically viable low-carbon electric system for the United States with a target implementation date of 2050. 

Dale and Elizabeth Hanson Fellowship in Ethics

Elissa Walter ’13 will research the major theories of environmental conservation from both biological and ethical standpoints. She hopes to determine the ways in which biological and philosophical approaches fit together to support a particular strategy or strategies of conversation. 

Rachel Levit Ades ’13 will examine the perceived instrumental value of hearing and seek to answer the question: Under what circumstances, if any, is a deaf child’s life bettered by receiving a (successful) cochlear implant? She plans to review what policies ought to be enacted in regard to cochlear implants and specifically, which individuals should make decisions on behalf of deaf children.  

Joe Concannon ’13 will work at Boulder, Colorado’s Naropa University (at the Jack Kerouac Center for Disembodied Poetics). He intends to spur conversation about social phenomena and engagement by writing approximately 10-15 ethically-oriented poems. 

Independent Research Fellowships

Members of Carleton’s Engineers Without Borders chapter will travel to Ccapacmachay, Peru to address the community’s needs of food security, water safety and personal hygiene. Here, they will renovate greenhouses, conduct water quality assessments of local water systems, and work with community volunteers to generate a curriculum on personal hygiene and sanitation for the local elementary school.

Julian Childs-Walker ’13 has been awarded funds to work with the Geological Science Department at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, NZ to conduct research on the effects of earthquakes in New Zealand, testing the accuracy of the VolcFlow model and using it to predict cliff collapses and rock slides from earthquakes in New Zealand.

Cooper Dodds ’13 intends to take black and white landscape photographs in six western national parks in the U.S. He will use photography to explore the psychological themes in nature as well as in his own mental landscape.

Elliot Johnson ’13 will be researching female reproductive behavior in rats. Collaborate with a research team which hopes to publish the results of this study, Elliot hopes to further the development of his neuroscience research skills through collecting data, learning behavioral, surgical and data techniques and discussing experimental design.

Lauren Young ’14 will travel to northern Italy to explore the food culture aligned with the Slow Food movement. She hopes to learn about people’s historic and social relationships to food by living with Slow Food families, meeting farmers and attending food events.She will be working with Zoe Craig, who will be traveling to southern Italy. 

Neil Isaacs and Frank Wright Fellowship in Investigative Journalism

Nora Cassidy ‘13

Jonathan Paradise Israel Experience Scholarship

Jacob Daniel Hamalian ‘14

Kelley International Fellowships

Rafadi Hakim ’13 will be travelling Maharashtra state in India to explore how the Ramayana and the Mahabharata Sanskrit epics are adapted into local, vernacular forms of storytelling. Through exploring the epics in children’s literature and folk performances, he hopes to investigate how modern Maharashtrians construct the two epics as part of their regional culture.

Larson International Fellowships

Linnea Bullion ’13 will be journeying to Barcelona, Copenhagen, and Bristol to photograph skateboarders and share their stories through short biographical and anthropological/sociological essays. These essays will culminate in a mixed-media photography and essay book that aims to promote a better understanding of skateboarders and their culture.

Zoe Craig ’14 will travel to southern Italy to explore the food culture aligned with the Slow Food movement. She will be working with Lauren Young, who is traveling to northern Italy. Together, they hope to experience a food culture different from the “fast food” mentality of the U.S. and will use their findings to create a multimedia project of their Slow Food experience.

Chris Densmore ’13 will be traveling to France to explore the cross-cultural ethics of food and agriculture through farming across southern France. He intends to apply the ideas of nonviolence and food sustainability to his exploration of French food ethics and agricultural sustainability.  

Megan Dolezal ’13 will be exploring the history and peace relations in Ireland through painting wild and urban landscapes. She will travel to a variety locations, visit museums and attend a music festival and an art festival to better understand the marks of history on a place and learn about Irish culture and contemporary thought.

Courtney Halbach ’13 will be observing how government food policies affect and promote sustainable agricultural practices in Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. She will live and work on host families’ dairy farms to experience and participate in the countries’ cultures and will compare these international observations to her own experience of growing up on a dairy farm.

Clare Zeitlin Harris ’13 will follow the Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil’s tour through South India, painting and sketching her experiences along the way. By observing her relationship to the people, cities and historical sites visits, she hopes to explore her own identity as an outsider.

Sarah Louise Nielsen ’13 will be journeying to different regions of Norway to explore the uprising and growth of Emergent Christianity. From this experience she hopes to understand how Emergent Christianity affects the way different Christian denominations around the world experience Jesus Christ and examine how communities are changing in response to this movement.

Chloe Zelkha ’13 will be trekking through the Vilcanota mountain range in Peru, a place home to several small indigenous communities that still maintain their spiritual and agricultural traditions. By experiencing the rhythm of indigenous life, participating in sustainable agricultural practices, engaging with environmental spiritualties, and backpacking through the wilderness she hopes to better understand the powerful link between land and people in Peru.

Allen and Irene Salisbury Fellowship

Erika Ohles ’13 will be observing and porcelain production in Jingdezhen, China and producing a series of drawings to enhance both her own future ceramic work and her work as a draftsman. She hopes to immerse herself in the community of artists and crafts people to strengthen her Chinese language skills and gaining a greater understanding of the culture.

Richard Salisbury Fellowship

Shantrice King ’13 will travel to Jamaica to explore the complex relationship between Jamaica’s sex education program and high rate of teen pregnancy. She will examine how the sex education program influences young women’s understandings about sex, sexuality and reproduction.

Initiative for Service Internships in International Development

Adele Daniel ’14 will be volunteering at the Cloud Forest School in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Here she will assist with the environmental education program, maintain school facilities and restore surrounding land.

Briana Engelson ’13 will participate in the Madagascar Community-Based Integrated Health Program by observing and assisting MAHEFA workers as they perform community based field work aimed at instructing rural communities about illness treatment and the importance of hygiene. She will help compose summaries of this work to evaluate the program’s effectiveness.

Anthony Hill-Abercrombie ’14 will intern with the Runa Foundation in Napa, Ecuador, helping a project aimed at conserving 10,000 hectares of forest by creating buffer zones of guayusa (a native tea tree) production. Here, he will help plant guayusa trees with farmers, monitor extractive activities, implement household economic analysis of agricultural activities, use GIS to create maps, and study the feasibility of generating payments for ecosystem services through a local water tax fund.

Ian Hollyer ’13 will work at Helping Hands Community Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal assisting local medical staff with managing and treating patients. His work will include tasks like organizing medical supplies, administration, public health education workshops, taking vital signs, and shadowing Nepalese doctors.

Maraki Ketema ’15 will be working with doctors at Nobel Higher Clinic in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Through working with the doctors, she hopes to gain insight into how the health care system works in Ethiopia and better understand the most common health care needs of Ethiopians and the challenges hospitals and clinics face in treating their patients.

Elayne Teska ’14 will volunteer with the International Volunteer Headquarters in Quito, Ecuador and Cuzco, Peru. She will be working with street children to help facilitate educational and social development in a rural and urban educational setting.

Meg Tuta ’13 will participate in the Light and Leadership Initiative, volunteering as a teacher for youth ages 7-17 in Huaycan, Peru. Here, she will have the opportunity to implement her own lesson plans, tutor students in English and math, teach music classes, facilitate physical education activities and immerse herself in the daily life of the community.

MCAN Scholars

Akemi Arzouman ’13 will conduct clinical dental research at Astra Tech HQ in Molndal, Sweden. Her duties will include categorizing all ongoing and finalized studies to create a searchable database, researching literature related to ongoing studies, and writing a report in coordination with their California satellite offices.

Lauren Chow ’14 will work with the Minnesota Coalition against Sexual Assault on a project working to prevent child sexual abuse through community outreach and advocating for public policy changes. She will use social media and collaborate with the communications team to create strategies for spreading the message and will conduct research and organize roundtables for child sexual abuse prevention and policy changes.

Jeweletter Johnson ’13 will participate in the McNair Scholars Fellowship Program, an organization that seeks to increase the rate of doctoral program completion by first generation, low income, and underrepresented students.

Fue Lee ’13 will work with the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center to help advance the interests of Southeast Asian Americans through advocacy, leadership development, and capacity building. She will gain hands-on experience with policy research and legislative advocacy, group collaboration, database management, communications and event management.

Raymond Ngu ’13 will intern with the Center for American Progress in the Development/Strategic Planning department. His duties will include summarizing activities and conveying the organization’s policy interests to major donors, researching the activities of the progressive philanthropic community, managing the Center’s donor database and assisting with events and fundraisers.

Sana Rafiq ’13 will work with the NEW group, an organization working to catalyze a socioeconomic transition to a new economy that is locally rooted, rust, and geared towards everyone’s wellbeing. She will work with stakeholders to develop a narrative for a new economy through general brainstorming, video media, editorial writing and other forms of social media.

Sadé Smith ’13 will work with Almond Consultants to design, restructure and code webpages under the guidance of one of the principal consultants. To gain additional educational experience, he will tackle various tailor-made technique building projects and observe the usability engineering process.

Herman Zheng ’13 will intern with the Asia Society’s Global Policy Programs, to follow the social, political and economic challenges facing the United States and countries in Asia. He will follow current developments in Asia and attend and report on meetings at the United Nations and various NGOs in New York City.

Richard T. Newman Family Fund for Language Study Internships

Tyler Gebauer ’14 will work with Sustainable Bolivia to help build solar ovens and educate rural communities about green alternatives. He will be staying with a Bolivian host family in Cochabamba and will be doing administrative work, conducting surveys in the countryside, and constructing ovens on site.

Social Justice Internships

Mitchell Campbell ’14 for his work at Minnesotans United for All Families.

Laura Garlock ’12 for her work with Casa de Esperanza and the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.

Hannah Comstock-Gay ’13 for her work with Mercy Connections in Vermont.

Leah Eby ’13 for her work with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, based in Boston.

Meg (Margaret) Holladay ’14 for her work with the Endangered Languages Program at Cultural Survival in Cambridge, MA.

Kelsey Klug ’13 for her work with the Endangered Languages Program at Cultural Survival in Cambridge, MA. 

Veasey Conway ’12 for his work with Wing Young Huie at Third Place photographic gallery in Minneapolis.

Aaron Hirsh ’13 for his work with TORCH in Northfield.

Callie Millington ’12 for her work with the Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies in New Orleans.

Yoni (Jonathan) Blumberg ’13 for his work with the New Economy Working Group at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.

Breanna Tetreault ’13 for her work at the Tutwiler Clinic in Mississippi.

Molly Curtiss ’13 for her work with the Advocates for Human Rights in Minneapolis.

Mo Vue ‘14 and Milah Xiong ’14 for their program for Hmong middle school girls in St Paul.

Sameena Ahmed ’12 for her work with Health Finders in Rice County.