In This Issue
LAS LINKS
STUDENT AWARDS
Awards, Scholarships and Fellowships
Anthropology
Costadina Aneziris was awarded the Hellenic Link Midwest Scholarship.
Nam Kim won a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant for archaeological research in Vietnam.
Eugene Liebenson, anthropology and Jewish studies student who received his BA in May of 2009, was awarded the National Security Education Program David L. Boren Undergraduate Scholarship.
Alex Markovic was awarded an International Research and Exchanges Board Fellowship for ethnographic fieldwork in Serbia.
Biological Sciences
In October 2008, Anand Sandesara, a biological sciences and history double major, earned a year-long $24,000 Ambassadorial Scholarship from the Rotary Foundation to study abroad in Tanzania. He will soon be studying at Muhimbili University in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where in September 2009 he will enroll in a one-year master's in public health program. Upon his return, he plans to attend medical school.
In April 2009, Carrie Seltzer won a highly competitive $30,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship to study how fragmented landscapes affect Tanzanian fruit bats—important agents of pollination and seed dispersal. She began her fellowship this past summer. Seltzer’s NSF Fellowship comes on the heels of the Bodmer International Travel Award she won from the college in 2008.
In May 2009, Shauna Gunaratne, who earned her bachelor's degree in biological sciences summa cum laude in three years, won a Fulbright Fellowship to explore the possibility that a diet centered on foods traditionally served in Mediterranean countries could lower the risk of developing diabetes. She will spend the next year studying components of the traditional Mediterranean diet under the guidance of Harokopio professor Demosthenes Panagiotakos, who conducted a large-scale health and nutritional survey of people living in the Athens area eight years ago.
In March 2009, two UIC undergraduates were awarded the Merage American Dream Fellowship. The $20,000 award, distributed over two years, is only awarded to immigrants. The College of LAS has two recipients: Amy Ye and Angela Bixby.
Chemistry
Recent graduate Aarti Sharma was awarded a $14,500 American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship to do diabetes research at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm for the 2009-2010 academic year. A diabetic herself, Sharma says of the work that awaits her in Sweden, “I’ll be researching the functional breakdown of islet cell transplants. These transplants are gaining momentum as a feasible treatment for type-1 diabetes—but long-term survival is usually rare.
Kristine Arboleda was the winner of the FMC Technologies Incorporated Award of Excellence and Scholarship.
Leah Casabianca was the winner of an American Association of University Women Fellowship.
Prakruti Modi and Aashani Tillekaratne won awards for their posters at the Chicago Section of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy meeting at UIC on April 7, 2009.
Marta Witek was awarded a training fellowship from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.
Communication
Gordon Carlson received the National Communication Association Graduate Student Award.
Kelly Quinn and James Cho received the International Communication Association student awards.
Criminology, Law and Justice
Ericka Adams and LaTosha Traylor were awarded Martin Luther King Scholarships.
Nixon Camilien received the Richard H. Ward Criminal Justice Award.
Tracy Crump was awarded a four year Diversifying Faculty in Illinois Fellowship.
LaDonna Long was awarded an American Society of Criminology Minority Fellowship for this past year.
Xavier Perez and Amanda Vasquez were recipients of Chicago Bar Association Entertainment Committee Criminal Justice Awards.
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Yaser Kattoum was selected for a Summer Research Internship in Science and Engineering at the University of Freiburg in Germany.
Economics
In October 2008, Sara Borelli and Kathleen Odell were awarded FMC Technologies, Incorporated Fellowships. This $9,000 fellowship is awarded to graduate students in business administration, economics, engineering, finance or related fields.
English
Brian Sheerin received the Gloria Fromm Award for outstanding dissertation research. He also received a Committee on Institutional Cooperation Postdoctoral Fellowship at Northwestern University.
Matt Oakes won a Consular Corps Scholarship.
Germanic Studies
During March 2009, Junior Sara Nack was selected to spend the next academic year in Germany as part of the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals. Nack is one of 75 Americans selected to take part in the full-year work-study scholarship program that promotes German-American cultural exchange. "In the future, I plan on becoming a German teacher and, later on, working for a study abroad company where my knowledge of the German language and culture can be applied to improving study abroad programs," Nack said.
History
Margarette Delgado was awarded a Diversifying Faculty in Illinois Fellowship.
Michael Goode was awarded a fellowship with the Library Company in Philadelphia. The fellowship is a one-month residency with a small stipend for research and living expenses.
Andrew Blom's dissertation examines the thought of Hugo Grotius, a philosopher and founding theorist of international law and justice. A recurring argument in Grotius’s major work, The Rights of War and Peace, is that owning a right to resort to war does not require it to be exercised. In his dissertation, “Justice with Humanity: Hugo Grotius and the Ethical Basis of International Affairs,” Blom argues Grotius' humanitarian ethic is based on a secular perspective that can be applied to individuals and governments equally. “I think that it is important for us to approach conflicts in ways that enable us to make a firm stand for what we believe to be our rights while retaining a willingness to adjust the ends we seek. Grotius proposed that we can find the motivation for taking such a stance in our concern for the humanity of ordinary citizens on both sides of the conflict,” said Blom.
On winning the Newcombe Fellowship, Blom said, “I feel very honored to have the highlight that a national fellowship brings to my work, to the quality of our philosophy department and to UIC. Fellowships that provide support for a full year of research are not very common in the humanities. They are especially prized in our field because they not only support the recipient's work but also open up an assistantship to support the work of others.”
Philosophy
In August 2008, Andrew Blom was among an elite group of scholars nationwide to be named a winner of the prestigious Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for the 2008-2009 academic year. The fellowship, which was granted to 29 doctoral candidates representing 10 fields of study, features a 12-month award of $23,000 to complete a dissertation that addresses ethical and religious questions in the humanities and social sciences. Blom’s dissertation takes a humanitarian approach to war.
Physics
In July 2008, Jeremy Callner, graduate student in the department of physics, was among 60 students nationwide invited to meet with Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany, at a conference sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. The meeting "made me feel really empowered to be my own scientist," he said. "I learned you cannot stop doing what you’re doing because somebody else thinks you’re wrong. They may be right, but you have to find it out for yourself."
Natalie Krzyzanowski and Eric Stachura, conducted research internships this summer in Zurich, Switzerland, at the Paul Scherrer Institute. The facility does research and development for particle physics tracking detectors for the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and highest energy particle accelerator. They are traveling under a grant from National Science Foundation Partnership for International Research and Education to Cecilia Gerber, professor of physics.
Wilson Barajas was the winner of a National Science Foundation Bridge to the Doctorate Award.
Alejandro Rebola was awarded a National Science Foundation Scientists, Kids and Teachers Fellowship.
Political Science
In March 2009, Suemayah Abu Douleh was named one of the 20 national recipients of the Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Graduate Fellowship for international studies. Co-sponsored by the U.S. State Department and Howard University's Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center, the award provides up to $34,000 annually for two years of graduate study in international affairs or another field related to the work of the U.S. Foreign Service. In the fall, Abu Douleh will begin graduate studies related to international affairs. During the summer between her first and second year of graduate school she will participate in a second internship based abroad in a U.S. embassy. After completing graduate school, the Rangel program and Foreign Service entry requirements, she will receive a three-year appointment as a Foreign Service officer. Abu Douleh plans to pursue public diplomacy-related duties as a Foreign Service officer and hopes to be placed in a U.S. embassy in the Middle East or Northern Africa.
In May 2009, Adam Kuranishi was awarded a Critical Languages Scholarship from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The scholarship will cover Kuranishi’s study of intermediate Arabic during a 10-week summer program at the American Institute for Maghrib Studies in Tangier, Morocco, as well as travel and living expenses.
Psychology
Noe Chavez was awarded a Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues grant-in-aid award of $1,000.
Mary Clare Kane was the recipient of the PsiChi Graduate Research Grant, maximum award of $1,500.
Tisha Wiley was awarded a 2008 Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues (APA Div.544) Distinguished Student Contribution Award, a 2008 Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice Section on Child Maltreatment Dissertation Award, the 2008 APA Advanced Training Institute, Structural Equation Modeling in Longitudinal Research, and a 2009 National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect Summer Research Institute Graduate Student Fellowship.
Sociology
In June 2009, Akilah Watkins-Butler was one of 60 students nationwide to receive a $60,000 Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship. Watkins-Butler will study African American marriage patterns and family formation and their impact on community functioning. "I want to devote scholarship in a way that everyday folks can [use it and learn]."
"I'm really interested to find out why African American marriage rates have been declining, especially over the last 70 years, and what that decline has meant for communities," Watkins-Butler said. "I want to find out how [residents] perceive their community changing, if at all, and what they perceive as the effect that marriage has on it." Her Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship will provide $20,000 annual funding for three years, in addition to a $2,000 award to UIC. She plans to produce a mini-documentary and a book following her dissertation to bring greater attention to the issue. For her, the issues at stake are personal. "I live in a world where many of my friends and family members want to get married but aren't able to get married because of a lot of social barriers," she said. "I hope to capture people's voices and package them in a way that people who work with communities of color can use as a tool.” Read more about Watkins-Butler’s research in the summer edition of Milestones.
In June 2009, Georgiana Davis, PhD candidate in the department of sociology, was awarded the 2009 Beth B. Hess Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship is awarded to graduate students who began their study in a technical school or community college, and who demonstrate a commitment to teaching, research or service in their community. This scholarship is awarded jointly by Sociologists for Women in Society, the Society for the Study of Social Problems and the American Sociological Association.
Illinois State Representative Ed Sullivan Jr. has awarded eight general assembly scholarships that provide a full year of tuition to a state-funded Illinois university. Recipients were chosen for academic achievement, extracurricular activities and community involvement. LAS student Yevgenia Kaznikov was chosen as one of the recipients.
Study Abroad Scholarships and Fellowships
The Benjamin Gilman Scholarship, established by the International Academic Opportunity Act of 2000, provides awards for U.S. undergraduate students who are receiving Federal Pell Grant funding at a two-year or four-year college or university to participate in study abroad programs worldwide. The LAS recipients of this scholarship, with their destination and major, are:
- Adnan Cassim, Morocco, Honors College, Guaranteed Professional Program Admissions in medicine, psychology
- Shaakira Horbrook, Spain, criminology, law and justice, political science with international studies minor
- Linda Qatanani, Jordan, English with psychology minor
- Suemayah Abu Douleh, Jordan, political science major with minors in international studies and mathematics
- Seweryn Skibinski, Dominican Republic, criminology, law and justice and Spanish language and literature
- Rigoberto Torres, Italy, double majoring in the teaching of Spanish and Italian with a minor in French
- Tam Trinh, Spain, biological sciences
- Kimberly Steele, $4,200, Morocco, political science
- Monica Perez, $3,500, China, psychology and pre-nursing
- Noimot Bakare, $4,000, Morocco, economics
Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. All rights reserved. Complete credits.