Hoffman is originally from Chelsea, Vt. He credits his college mentors, particularly Professors Martin Oyata, Cao Chunjing, and Brit Chase in the Fellowships Office for pushing him academically and intellectually while at UVM. After completing his Fulbright experience he plans to return to the U.S. and pursue a master’s degree in Chinese-English translation and interpretation. He ultimately plans to work as a language interpreter for the U.S. government or in the private sector.

Emma Kantrov ’12 has been awarded an English teaching assistantship to Brazil for the 2014 academic year. She will be teaching at a university and mentoring Brazilian students who will go on to become English language teachers throughout the country.

While at UVM, Kantrov majored in environmental sciences and minored in Spanish. She spent extensive time outside of the classroom working as a teacher and a tutor in after school programs run by the Burlington school district as well as the Sara Holbrook Community Center. Her experience tutoring refugees, immigrants and English language learners in the Burlington area inspired her to pursue science education as a career. The Fulbright will enable her to build on her teaching experiences while also perfecting her Spanish and Portuguese language skills.

Kantrov credits her college mentors, particularly Portuguese language professor Debora Teixeira, for their mentorship and support throughout the Fulbright application process. Originally from Lexington, Mass., she plans to return to the Boston area after her Fulbright experience and teach science in a high school that caters to newly arrived immigrants.

Brienne Toomey ’12 was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Germany for the 2013-2014 academic year. She will teach English as well as American government, history and civics, and she will also serve as an adviser to German teachers who teach English.

A North Andover, Mass. native, Toomey came to UVM to pursue environmental studies and to prepare to embark on a career that focused on environmental resource conservation. Her study of German language and culture (she was a double environmental studies and German major) played a prominent role in how she thought of promoting sustainable living in society. While studying abroad in Germany during her junior year, she saw how the country had made significant changes to its energy generation and transportation practices in order to live in a more sustainable and energy efficient manner. During her Fulbright year, Toomey plans to explore these practices and potentially bring these ideas back to organizations in the U.S.

Toomey graduated from UVM magna cum laude and as an Honors College scholar. While at the university she was an active participant in the DREAM Mentoring Program, and she regularly contributed her art work to The Water Tower. Since graduating she has been working for the National Gardening Association in Burlington. After returning from Germany in 2014, Toomey plans to continue her work in renewable technologies and sustainable initiatives.

A rigorous undergraduate intellectual experience is required to assemble a strong Fulbright proposal, and Toomey credits her mentors in the German and Russian language department for pushing her to perfect her language and enable her to study language through a cultural lens. She says Professors Wolfgang Mieder, Dennis Mahoney, Helga Schrekenberger, and Adrianna Borra were especially influential in her studies.

Doubleday, Hodulik, Hoffman, Kantrov, and Toomey are five of more than 1,500 U.S. citizens who will travel abroad for the 2013-2014 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations in foreign countries and in the United States also provide direct and indirect support.

Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program operates in more than 155 countries worldwide.

Since 2005, when the university put a centralized fellowship outreach and support program in place, 125 UVM students have won or been finalists in the country's most prestigious and competitive competitions, including the Fulbright, Rhodes, Goldwater, Marshall, Udall, Truman, Madison, Critical Language, SMART, Gilman and Boren Overseas scholarships.

“It was a brutal slaughtering of people,” Krikorian says. “You can still feel all of the emotion and pain." Yet, he explains, it requires a level of emotional removal to craft the details into the kind of poems that won him this year’s Benjamin B. Wainwright Prize for poetry. “Krikorian’s work has a certain level of gravitas,” Jackson says. “It is some of the best writing that I have encountered since I started teaching here at UVM.”  

April 24 commemorates the night in 1915 that ushered in the Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government. The following work by Krikorian puts the images that live within the lives of families into words:

Hazel Remembers the Massacres

1.

Oh, it was awful I guess.

Throats cut, sons beheaded—

Boys were butchered like lambs

for kebab, the unborn held high on a sword,

pulled from the belly of the mother.

That's the easy part though, the rest looms

like a fever in the cold.

Women were lined like a slaver's bazaar

single-file, naked with nothing but coins

in their uterus. That should have been enough,

but the Turks needed more,

they danced them like dervishes

set wild aflame, or like Araxi to Zorab

she'd become their whore,

so long as she was alone in the world.

2.

There are a lot of underground places in Armenia

where the people could speak

in their native tongue. It was forbidden

so they hid beneath their homes

to share secrets

as though they were still alive.

Cousin Baidzar, sweet quidg, awoke

to mordant blindness like she was tied

in an ungovan blanket. Bodies tumbled

like a gourd pile all around her, the sun 

a broker of sight on her mother's last embrace.

She walked away like a whisper of the dead,

her earlobes cut wet for their gold.

3.

Past the Turkish border was a promise

like the Holy Land that curdled in the stomach

and browned. Forty years were never so cruel

as the caravan of lies left drying

like figs in the Syrian desert.

They were torn from their mountain like skin from bone,

ever marching to a place that was nothing

to end like dogs starving on their own wails.

After a hundred years, words

are all that's left.

Born out of concern for the children under her care and the picture books she was reading them, Franz decided to write her senior thesis on the subject with one primary question in mind: “How do children’s picture books potentially deter or reinforce materialistic values and consumer culture?” She revealed her findings – among the first to focus on the role of children’s literature in shaping material and consumer values – in her 196-page Honors College senior thesis, “Cultivating Little Consumers: How Picture Books Influence Materialism in Children.”

“I read three or four books a night as a babysitter and started noticing how much greed there was in children’s books and became deeply concerned,” says Franz, who is double-minoring in studio arts and green building and community design. “I realized how damaging consumerism is to the environment and tied that to my love of children. This study was an attempt to reconcile the two.”

Franz, who based her results on a content analysis of 30 picture books written between 1998 and 2012 from a list of Caldecott Medal Winners, New York Times bestsellers and librarian recommended books, found that picture books reflect, reinforce, and deter consumerism simultaneously with environmental messages serving as the most frequent way to counter consumerism. In the study, a number of picture books featured excessive amounts of toys, sending pro-consumer messages to children ages zero to six while others contained more outdoor-related themes that Franz says serve as a tool for countering consumerism.

Franz will be among more than 300 students presenting their research at the 2013 Student Research Conference on Tuesday, April 23 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Davis Center.

“The results of this study reveal that picture books have a significant potential to act as both an avenue for becoming consumers and a tool for countering consumerism” says Franz, who has a professional certificate in sustainable business practices from UVM. “In order to help children to become positive, connected, responsible individuals, we must improve the quality and consciousness of the media and their ability to respond to it. Picture books, whose tradition is to inspire imagination and offer refuge, are a fantastic place to start. I know I’ll never read a book the same way again.”   

Coding consumerism

Franz, who cited a study showing a decrease in the number of interactions with the outdoors is resulting in “nature deficit disorder," created a comprehensive and unique coding system that identified 50 indicators across 10 categories representing different ways in which picture books can promote and discourage the consumer socialization of readers. Text and illustrations were coded to measure the occurrence of indicators of consumerism or counter-consumerism across five themes: individual material orientation, interpersonal material orientation, social norms, commercialization and environmental messages.

Some of the 37 pro-consumer indicators included “desire for more stuff,” “material goods as a vehicle for approval/gaining friends” and “focus on objects instead of peers in social setting.” Among the 13 counter-consumer indicators were “self-acceptance,” “sharing,” and “positive orientation to the outdoors/inspiration.” Overall, the average book contained 5.34 indicators of pro and counter-consumerism. The most frequent number of instances among counter-consumer indicators were “outdoor engagement” and “creative/imaginative engagement,” while “standard of living: above average” and “engagement with toys/games” topped the pro-consumer indicators.

The Pete the Cat books, for example, included pro-consumer indicators by showing Pete with a nice car, an expensive guitar, surfboards, and a significant number of toys located in an above-average home. Conversely, “nature immersion” ranked high due to the fact that “outdoor engagement” was found in 76.7 percent of the sample (23 of 30 books), with characters playing on playgrounds, skateboarding, biking or playing in the sand at the beach. Many characters go on walks, while others describe a “more emotional engagement in their natural surroundings” like feeling the wind, smelling the air or imagining riding a bird across the landscape in The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.

“Rachel took on an ambitious capstone research project that required great persistence in the design phase,” says Stephanie Kaza, Franz’s adviser and director of the Environmental Program. “Her thoughtful and meticulous analysis reveals important findings on the specific nature of consumer messages in children’s literature. Perhaps her greatest triumph was sticking it out through the many challenging phases of such a major piece of independent work.”

Putting research into practice

Franz is hoping scholars, parents, caregivers and educators use the information to offset other consumer drivers like television, video games and social media. She also hopes her research, which identifies leverage points for shaping consumerism through more careful selection of children’s picture books, is expanded to include classic books to examine how these values have changed over time.

“Most books, like our lives, have a combination of both messages,” says Franz, who has worked as an executive assistant at a design firm during college. “Parents are the number one source for countering consumerism. I’m hoping this study encourages people to develop critical thinking skills around consumerism and to select books more carefully.”

The next day, Friday, the tournament began. The tournament is one of Europe’s best and most challenging, featuring 62 teams from 25 countries, from as far away as Hong Kong, Israel, Greece, Abu Dhabi, USA and all over the European continent. On Friday there were two rounds, and after both teams got a first in round one, they met stronger competition and both got a second in round two. As you may know, in the WUDC format there are four teams in each debate, two for the motion and two against, and the teams are ranked as 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th. The debate is judged by a panel of three who come to the decision after a consensus discussion before disclosing the result to the four teams. It was a good start to the first day, as Vermont expected this tournament to be more difficult than Budapest, even though that had also been a very challenging tournament.

On Saturday there were four debates. In round three Becca and Sarina scored a strong first place while Drew and Mariel got a third place. In round four Drew and Mariel got a second while Sarina and Becca took a fourth. After four rounds each team had 8 team points (3 for 1st, 2 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd and 0 for 4th). Knowing that it would take at least 12 points to reach the semifinals (the top eight teams) to debate on Sunday, both teams had their work cut out for them. And they delivered. Drew and Mariel got two firsts against the top of the draw while Sarina and Becca got a first and a third. Thus, Drew and Mariel finished on 14 points (2nd ranked team after prelims) while Sarina and Becca finished on 12 points (just squeaking through as the 8th ranked team).

The semifinals on Sunday were a complete new story. In separate semifinals, Becca and Sarina advanced (the top two teams in each debate advance) as a clear first, while Drew and Mariel did not advance after a 4-3 split amongst the seven judges. This put Becca and Sarina in the final against traditional European debate powerhouses RRIS (Israel), Babes Boyal (Romania) and Gottingen (Sweden). The final debate motion was that the new Pope should be elected by the members of the Catholic Church instead of by the College of Cardinals. Becca and Sarina were the first proposition team, with BBU in first opposition, Gottingen in second proposition and RRIS in second opposition. The debate was held in the ancient official formal hall of the University of Vienna, flanked by statues of Maria Teresa and King Rudolf. The media and hundreds were there to watch the debate.

See more pictures, videos, and read the full story here.

By all accounts a brilliant student, Ebalu says she came to UVM unprepared for the transition to college. "My freshman year I didn't have many resources," she says. "But I met some great people who helped and guided me."

Ebalu was born in the U.S. of Nigerian parents who took her and her four siblings back to their homeland when she was two, before they became acculturated as Americans. “I’m really glad they did,” she says, “because I got to experience the beauty of Nigeria and the glory of being an African.”

At 12, after losing a sister from sudden illness who was just a month away from starting medical school in America, Ebalu’s father brought the remaining children back “to fulfill our dreams because life doesn’t go according to plan.” Despite difficult circumstances in New York City, her mother behind in Nigeria, Ebalu says it was in high school that she came to love psychology (her major) and German (her minor, which took her to Austria for a semester abroad).

Time for Africa                                                                                                                     

As she settled into UVM, becoming heavily involved with the ALANA and Women’s centers, Ebalu was walking through Dewey Hall when she passed Karen Fondacaro’s open door, caught a glance of a clock in the shape of Africa and stopped short. Fondacaro, clinical professor of psychology and director of the Behavior Therapy and Psychotherapy Center (BTPC), invited her in. “She started looking around,” Fondacaro recalls, “and she said, “’I feel like I’m home, what do you do?’ And we just had this immediate connection to each other. That was it.”

Fondecaro explained that the clock and other African influences were related to her work directing Connecting Cultures through BTPC, a program providing mental health services to refugees. Ebalu was in from that moment, pouring herself into projects in the New American community through academics and personal service, all the while solidifying a focus for her long-term career goals in clinical psychology.

From her first year Ebalu became aware of the McNair Scholar program, designed to help advance first-generation, limited-income and/or underrepresented undergraduates who are academically competitive and have the intention of earning a doctoral degree. She prepared herself early she says, knowing the opportunity would serve her well. Named a McNair research fellow in 2012, Ebalu, under Fondacaro’s guidance, chose to study the relationship between post-migration stressors such as unemployment, lack of social support, language and education barriers and their impact on mental health outcomes in refugee populations (she had noticed that the research tended to focus on prior trauma).

If statistical analysis tends to be the least engaging task for most scientists, it wasn’t for Ebalu, hungry to expand her knowledge. “I just think of her,” Fondacaro recalls, “smiling through her multiple linear regressions. She was so excited to learn the statistical procedure. It was wonderful."

Gratitude in action

Despite Ebalu's intellectual strength, it's not what makes people effusive. “Her mind is constantly going but really and truly,” says Candace Taylor, coordinator of programming and leadership development at the university’s Women’s Center, “what I connect most with Tracie is this guiding moral compass, this heart... She is constantly thinking about how she can give back, I think it really is the lens through which she walks this world.”

One of Ebalu’s big personal initiatives this year was spearheading a coat drive for the refugee community -- a project Burton (through a connection with Taylor’s husband) enthusiastically supported -- collecting some 500 coats and other winter wear. Ebalu is a fan of the phrase, “pay it forward.” Because she knows.

It was Taylor, Ebalu will tell you, who gave her a coat when she needed one. But ask Taylor about it, and she tells you that Ebalu turned around and gave it to her little sister. “That’s Tracie,” she laughs. “She will hear that somebody needs something, and she will literally take it off of her own back.”

“The reason she did the coat drive,” says Beverly Colston, director of the ALANA center, is because she knows what it’s like for a family to not have coats. How do you function when you’re cold? Tracie is committed to making sure that it will be better for people than it was for her.”

The success of this effort in a sense represents the culmination of Ebalu’s growth at UVM. According to Colston, Ebalu has always sought out leadership roles, even ones that may have been a bit beyond her at the time. “But the truth is,” Colston says, “she just soaked up those experiences and used them to get wise and go to the next level.”

Now Colston calls her a community connector, an activist who is passionate about issues that face women of color, a leader who uses her voice to speak up, educate others and bring them in.

Quirky, authentic, almost uncensored are among the descriptions of Ebalu that make her real. At times, they say, exuberant to a fault.

“She’s so compassionate and she cares so deeply,” Taylor says, “to the extent where you have to reel her in a little bit and say it’s okay for her to take care of herself too. But she’s got a big vision, big dreams and I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who has that energy that you know they’re going to accomplish it.”

Ebalu, too, has no doubt what she’ll do. For herself, for her mother, maybe for her older sister.

“I tell (my mom) I’m really certain I’m going to get a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and one day my name is going to be Dr. Tracie Ebalu.”

Diving in

For senior Peter Grunawalt, who conducted field research in India's Himalayan region through the Brattleboro, Vt.-based School for International Training (SIT), one uncomfortable moment came when setting out on a research excursion to a village with no pre-arranged shelter. Eventually, housing was secured with the help of his translator, and Grunawalt was able to spend time in the area, speaking with residents about the factors affecting youth migration. His presentation, "Why are Cities the Only Place for Dreams? Rural to Urban Migration in India," delved into the farming practices and educational structures, among other considerations, contributing to the growing influx of youth to urban areas in the northern Indian region.

Senior Sarah Gallalee, who also studied abroad through SIT, spoke on "Analyzing the Barriers that Prevent Access to Diagnosis and Treatment for Tuberculosis in Dehradun, India." Tuberculosis, a treatable and curable disease, is still among the deadliest agents in the country. Gallalee conducted interviews with patients, officials and health workers and pursued spatial analysis research using geographic information systems to look at reasons why tuberculosis persists as a public health problem even when India has taken measures to improve its policies regarding treatment and reporting. One barrier became apparent to Gallalee when speaking with young women who reported the stigma surrounding the illness -- one that "could destroy chances of a proper marriage." This factor and others, such as religious misconceptions and loss of working time, she said, are among the barriers that still exist to both diagnosis and treatment.

Sophomore Benjamin Ryan discussed two independent trips he's taken to Bangladesh, one during high school and one during a gap year prior to enrolling at UVM. Ryan discussed the fledgling research he conducted in slums that sparked his decision to found a non-governmental organization, the Foundation for Climate Change Refugees. Conducting surveys among residents of slums, Ryan learned that many of its inhabitants had been displaced due to the effects of global climate change. Bangladesh, with its sea-level elevation and geography that makes it prone to typhoons, is considered "ground zero" of global warming, and its people, Ryan said, all already feeling the effects. "Climate change is not something we have to be concerned about in the future," Ryan said. "It's something that impacts people every day. It's a contemporary issue."

Reflection

The four students had met last fall about their mutual interest in contemporary issues in South Asia. Rosenblum organized the research forum, with support from the Anthropology Department, as a way to share their work with a broader audience as well as with each other. After their presentations, they answered questions from Steinberg as well as attendees, and spoke with each other on issues ranging from their personal health and safety while traveling to areas of common findings among their work.

Rosenblum's research on street children focused on agricultural antecedents to childhood migration, so his work, although dealing with a different region of India, had strong overlap with Grunawalt's. He was also particularly interested in Ryan's findings regarding climate change as a cause for migration since their areas of focus share a river system, similar weather patterns, and increased occurrence of natural disasters, Rosenblum explained.

Rosenblum has plans to pull his notes and interviews together into a research paper and hopes to one day return to India. "I definitely think I'll go back," he says. "I have a lot of connections and ties there now."   

In the meantime, he'll continue his global research on this side of the hemisphere: he departs this week with SIT for a semester abroad in Buenos Ares, Argentina.

Finalists for the Presidential Poster University Competition

Bonnie Cross is a second year English graduate student from Saegertown, PA. Bonnie was a finalist in the Arts and Humanities category for her poster, The Closest Shave:  Sweeney Todd’s Passing Through Class as Victorian Terror.  Her advisor for the poster was Assistant Professor of English Sarah Alexander. She is currently applying to PhD programs in the English department. During her time at UVM, Bonnie has loved working with her fellow graduate students and teaching the English 1 course. 

Tera Fazzino is a second year graduate student in the Experimental Psychology PhD program at UVM. Tera was a finalist in the Health and Biological Sciences category for her poster, The Bi-directional Relationship between Craving and Alcohol Consumption as Measured via Interactive Voice Response. Working with her poster advisor Gail Rose, PhD, and John Helzer, MD in the department of Psychiatry, her research focuses on novel technology-based interventions for addiction and severe mental illness.  One of the unique qualities of UVM is that it encourages working with researchers independent of their department affiliation. This cross-disciplinary focus has allowed Tera to reach across departments to work with the best investigators with expertise in her areas of interest. Gaining a broad perspective from clinical psychologists, experimental psychologists, physician-researchers, and biostatisticians has provided her with diverse viewpoints and allowed her to consider research questions in a unique way. She is originally from southern Connecticut.

Max Graves is originally from Mebane, North Carolina.  He performed undergraduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he graduated in fall 2011 with three different bachelor's degrees:  a BS in Interdisciplinary Mathematics, a BA in Chemistry, and a BA in Physics.  Max is currently a PhD candidate in the Materials Science program at UVM and is working with the Condensed Matter Theory group under Physics Assistant Professor Adrian Del Maestro.  Max’s poster was a finalist in the Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering category and is titled Path Integral Monte Carlo Study of Proximity Effects in Confined 4He.  He plans to seek a post-doctoral research position after graduation.  He really enjoys his interactions with the professors as well as his fellow students.

Jacqueline Metzger’s hometown is Albany, NY, and her major is Asian Studies, with a minor in Linguistics. Jacqueline was the winner in the Arts and Humanities category for her poster Puppetry of the Mind: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder & Nathanael in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman.  Her poster advisor was German Professor Dennis Mahoney.  Her post graduation plan is to teach English for two years, one in Japan and one in South Korea. She will also hopefully be studying abroad in South Korea for a year next fall.  After teaching for two years, she wants to go to graduate school. The things she likes most about her time at UVM are too plentiful to list, but she particularly liked living in Living/Learning and being a program director of Korea House, as well as having the opportunity to learn Japanese, and finally, she liked the professors and students here.

Winners of the College of Arts and Sciences Presidential Poster Competition

Samya Chakravorty is a sixth year PhD candidate in the Department of Biology, planning to defend and finish his PhD by May 2013. His poster, To Sing or To Fly:  Role of Muscle Proteins in Drosophila Mating and Flight Behaviors, was the winner in the Graduate -- Sciences category.   Biology Professor and department chair Jim Vigoreaux was his advisor. Samya’s hometown is Kolkata, India.  He received his engineering (Bachelor of Technology) degree in Biotechnology from West Bengal University of Technology, India, after which he came to UVM. He plans to do post-doctoral research after his PhD to gain more experience and achieve a lifelong goal of becoming a top-notch scientist. During his time at UVM the Biology department provided him a level of versatility in research from molecular and cellular science to ecology and evolutionary aspects. Moreover, UVM allowed him to collaborate in other departments like the Dept. of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics in the College of Medicine. Last but not least, the opportunities of mentoring and teaching undergraduates helped him immensely in becoming a better scientist, mentor, and presenter.

Branford, Connecticut is the hometown of Geography major Sarah Gallalee.  Her poster is titled Using GIS to Analyze Mobile Dental Care Need in Vermont.  It was chosen the winner in the Undergraduate -- Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences category, and her advisor was Associate Professor of Geography Beverley Wemple. After graduating with a minor in Psychology, Sarah hopes to conduct research abroad and then attend graduate school in public health.  During her time at UVM, Sarah enjoyed leading TREK, an intense and unique team-building and enrichment program for first-year students led by upper-class peers.  She also enjoyed participating in outing club trips, the Integrated Study of Earth and the Environment program, and discovering the Geography department.

Jen Grauer is from Baltimore, Maryland.  She is a Zoology and Environmental Sciences double major with a minor in Philosophy. Her poster was the winner in the Undergraduate -- Sciences category and is titled Ecological Niche Modeling of Pogonomyrmex Harvester Ant Lineages. Jen’s advisor on the poster was Associate Professor of Biology Sara Cahan. Currently, Jen is applying to grants that would allow her to conduct research abroad after graduation.  If she does not receive these, she will be looking for a job before applying to graduate school. Jen has most enjoyed the opportunities to conduct research in lab settings and in the field throughout her undergraduate career, as well as specific classes in the sciences such as Bernd Heinrich's Winter Ecology and Bill Kilpatrick's Mammalogy.

Martin Seehuus is from Princeton, New Jersey and he is in the Clinical Psychology PhD program working under the mentorship of Dr. Alessandra Rellini in the Sexual Health Research Clinic.  Martin’s poster, The Relationship between Sexual Function and Cardiovascular Health in Women: Preliminary Results, won in the Graduate -- Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences category.   After graduation and his clinical internship, Martin is looking forward to an academic career as a professor in a research university. He has very much enjoyed the collaborations with people in other departments—in this project, for example, he worked with Ira Bernstein, MD and Sarah Hale, PhD from OB/GYN, and Martha Monson, MD, a recent graduate of the UVM Medical School.  

Just two years out from graduation, alumna Sasha Fisher '10 has wasted no time putting her self-designed major to use. If "human security" sounds abstract and philosophical (just the sort of lofty, idealistic concept that bright, optimistic undergraduates might enjoy probing during their four years in college), Fisher has found a way to bring her choice of study back down to Earth.

Spark MicroGrants, the non-profit she's co-founded, has already helped humans in eastern Africa achieve security of one kind or another, by funding projects to improve access to education, clean water, healthcare, food and more.

Before college, Fisher "was very interested in global development and all these efforts to eradicate poverty, but," she says, "I, like a lot of people in my generation, didn't feel like they were going well."

When she arrived at UVM from New York City, her plan was to investigate aid work with a multidisciplinary approach. "I ended up realizing that in economics, the goal is to have poverty reduction -- that's not actually my goal. In political science, it's about the state -- that's not actually my goal either," she says. "What I want to do is to enable all the humans on Earth, even if they're in an illegitimate state or a corrupt state, to meet all their basic needs. And that doesn't necessarily mean money -- that means that they have food, that they have health care, that they have a house, that they have access to clean water. And so while that sounds very obvious, it's a whole other paradigm and a whole new way of thinking about aid and about what our goals are in the world."

Enter the "human security" major (one half of her double-major; Fisher also studied studio art), a term introduced to her by Ted McMahon, research associate professor of community development and applied economics. "It's a way of addressing those needs and addressing them in a non-state-based way and accepting there's a rising legitimacy in non-state actors such as NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and communities," she explains.

"Sasha's engagement and focus on real-world problems is always what struck me about her," says Peter VonDoepp, associate professor of political science, who this spring invited Fisher back to campus to speak to his students. "When she was a student, she took my African policies class, and what continued to strike me was not just her level of intellectual engagement and real enthusiasm for the material but also her applied understanding of the material and capability for thinking about real-world problems. Sasha's not stuck in the abstract, it's all about this world for her."

After finishing her senior thesis on the topic and graduating, Fisher, inspired and educated by her work as an undergrad with the New Sudan Education Initiative, another non-profit created by UVM alumni, co-founded Spark MicroGrants with Georgetown and Columbia University graduate Teddy Svoronos, who conceived of the organization as a Fulbright Scholar in Tanzania, and computer scientist Neal Lesh, who specializes in using information technology to address poverty. With an initial $10,000 investment, Fisher moved to Rwanda two months after graduating and began putting the model into action.

What is the model? It's simple, she says: let community members drive development in their villages. Rather than NGOs and other outside groups dictating what a community needs, Spark MicroGrants offers a sum of money (typically $5,000 or less) and works with the community to identify their needs and draft a proposal that ensures sustainability of the chosen project. (Watch the audio slideshow above to learn how a group of women in Uganda turned $1,600 into a school for their vilage's children.)

Don't confuse microgranting with microlending. While the latter has received a good amount of attention from the media, not all of it has been favorable. That concept, which enables individuals to loan money to help impoverished people fund a small business, has drawn criticism for failing to reach the poorest of the developing world, leading more people into the debt cycle and lacking sustainability. Spark's model of microgranting, on the other hand, erases debt from the equation, and focuses on improving quality of life for a community, rather than earning money for a single entrepreneur.

So far, Spark has funded more than 24 projects in Rwanda and Uganda, and has expanded from a full-time staff of just Fisher, then Fisher and fellow UVM alumnus Eamon Penney '09, to now employing seven full-timers and a team of part-time staff from universities in both countries. In August, Fisher says, the full-time ranks will increase to 12.

"It is so exciting to think about Spark in the long run, because one of the things we're doing is we're building a model for microgranting, and this model could be used everywhere in the world," Fisher says. "Hopefully we'll have proven that this model is the model we should be using for development."

To learn more about Spark MicroGrants and to donate, visit its website: sparkmicrogrants.org.

“The Fulbright competition has become one of our most successful national fellowship competitions in the past few years,” notes Lisa Schnell, associate dean of the Honors College. “Brit Chase, our Fellowships Coordinator who recruits and advises students interested in the Fulbright competition, has effectively tapped into the rich vein of excellence and commitment to global issues on campus. Year after year, the campus Fulbright committee, which interviews all applicants in the fall, is truly impressed by the depth of the applicant pool.”  Schnell also remarked, “We had eleven very deserving finalists this year, and we wish all of them had won Fulbrights, but we’re just thrilled for the five students who did — it’s a very tough competition, and this is a wonderful result.”

James Dopp '10 has been awarded a Fulbright research grant to China for the 2012-2013 academic year. Dopp will be investigating the role of local forest guards in the conservation of black snub-nosed monkeys at Baimaxueshan National Nature Reserve in Yunnan, China. His work will lead to a deeper understanding in Chinese cultural and societal values and how they relate toward conservation policies for endangered species. He will leave for China in October and will be working closely with researchers at the Yunnan Institute of Geography as well as the Yunnan Green Environmental Development Fund.

Dopp is a Chinese major with a strong anthropological background and significant experience in the study of wildlife conservation. After studying abroad on UVM’s Yunnan, China program in the spring of 2009, Dopp returned to UVM and was inspired by an anthropology course on non-human primates. He then took as many anthropology classes as he could until he graduated, and after he completed his coursework he went on to pursue several fieldwork opportunities. In the past couple years Dopp, a Bethesda, Md. native, has returned to China to work with Central Washington University as well as with the San Diego Zoo. During his more recent trips, he has carried out surveys of Guizhou snub-nosed monkey ecology at the Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve in Guizhou province, and he also conducted research on the relationship between tourism and Tibetan macaque behavior in Huangshan, China.

Dopp credits his success in the classroom as well as in the field to the mix of anthropology and Chinese language mentors he had at UVM. He says Professors Deborah Blom and Jeanne Shea in the anthropology department were close mentors as he began combining his interest in anthropology with his expertise in China and his passion for wildlife conservation. He also credits Professors John Yin and Diana Sun in the Chinese department, who he says deeply influenced his love of Chinese language and writing. Dopp says Professor Eric Esselstrom in the history department also enabled him to gain a much more fair and sensitive view to Chinese and Japanese history and society.

After he completes his Fulbright research, Dopp plans to attend graduate school for anthropology, where he hopes to continue to research primates and conservation in China and their relation to human culture.

Ryan Peterson '12 has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Germany for the 2012-2013 academic year. He will teach English as well as American government, history and civics, and he will also serve as an adviser to German teachers who teach English.

A Weathersfield, Conn. native, Peterson has a strong affinity for languages. While French has always been his main language of interest (Peterson is a French major, and he spent time in high school and college studying in France), he became curious about the German language and started taking the language during his freshman year at UVM. An outstanding student and a patient teacher (Peterson has tutored refugees and other English language learners in the Burlington area), he decided to pursue Fulbright’s teaching assistantship so he could perfect his language skills while also helping German students get a deeper sense of the English language, American history and culture.

Peterson credits professors Helga Schrekenberger, Adrianna Borra, Lia Cravedi and Jenny Prue for pushing him academically and intellectually while at UVM, as well as supporting him as he applied for the Fulbright this past fall. As a Fulbright Scholar, Peterson will continue to advance his language and cultural competencies, and when he returns to the U.S., he aspires to work in international affairs.

University of Vermont graduate student Mark Russell has also been awarded a Fulbright English teaching assistantship to Germany for the 2012-2013 academic year. He will also teach English as well as American government, history and civics.

Teaching has always been a passion for Russell; he graduated magna cum laude from Shenandoah University in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in music education. But during his time at Shenandoah he became passionate about Germany and learning the German language. He ultimately decided that he saw himself as a language teacher, which led him to enroll in UVM’s graduate German program. As a graduate student he is focusing his master’s thesis on studying how music impacts German culture.

Russell is originally from Winchester, Va., and he credits Professor Dennis Mahoney in the German department for pushing and encouraging him to thrive in his language studies and his master’s thesis. As a Fulbright Scholar, Russell will have the chance to perfect his German as well as his teaching, and when he returns to the U.S. he plans to become a German teacher.

Katie Sacks '11 was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Austria for the 2012-2013 academic year. She has been placed in Linz and will be teaching students at both the Peuerbach Bundesgymnasium und Bundesrealgymnasium and Kollegium Petrinum.

Sacks is originally from Ottawa, Canada, and she was an English and Holocaust studies major while at UVM. She credits history professors Alan Steinweis, Jonathan Huener and Francis Nicosia, English professor Lokangaka Losambe and German professor Theresia Hoeck for all the guidance and inspiration they provided while she worked on her application. When she returns from Austria she plans to continue her studies by pursuing a master's degree in Holocaust studies.

Robyn Suarez '12 has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Malaysia for the 2012-2013 academic year. She will leave the U.S. in January to teach English in either a primary or secondary school in the states of Terengganu, Pahang, and Johor, and will most likely be placed in a small town or rural area.

Suarez is a Williston, Vt., native, a Patrick Scholar and an Honors College student. Suarez has also been deeply involved in the deaf community in Vermont; she is fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and has received recognition from the UVM and local community for the work she’s done as a tutor for hearing-impaired refugee populations. This experience has made learning about different countries’ sign language an important goal for Suarez. After studying abroad in Ireland (where she exchanged lessons in ASL for lessons in Irish Sign Language), Suarez returned to UVM to write her English honors thesis on the social influences of Irish Sign Language. While in Malaysia Suarez also plans to study Malaysian Sign Language (called Bahasa Isyarat Malaysia) as well as how the Malaysian education system accommodates deaf students.

When Suarez returns from Malaysia she aspires to receive a master’s in deaf education. With this degree, she plans to work in a hearing-impaired classroom as an English teacher. She is especially interested in working with a diverse group of students, including immigrant and refugee students who are deaf and need extra help in assimilating to the American school system.

Dopp, Peterson, Russell, Sacks and Suarez are five of more than 1,500 U.S. citizens who will travel abroad for the 2012-2013 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations in foreign countries and in the United States also provide direct and indirect support. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program operates in more than 155 countries worldwide.

In addition to the Fulbright Scholarship winners, UVM students or recent alumni this year have also won a Truman Scholarship, a Goldwater Scholarship, a Udall Scholarship, a Boren Scholarship, five Gilman Scholarships, and four Critical Language Scholarships. UVM also had two Truman Scholarship finalists, two students given Honorable Mention recognition in the Goldwater Scholarship competition, two other students who were finalists in the Boren Scholarship competition, and four alternates and three other Fulbright finalists, in addition to the five winners.

Since 2005, when the university put a centralized fellowship outreach and support program in place, 92 UVM students have won or been finalists in the country’s most prestigious and competitive competitions, including the Fulbright, Rhodes, Goldwater, Marshall, Udall, Truman, Madison, Gilman and Boren Overseas scholarships.

Every other year, the New England regional conference for the American College Dance Festival Association (ACDFA) culminates with a “gala concert” of the eight to ten dances that adjudicators consider the best choreography from the 45 or so pieces presented. At every such conference since the launch of dance, a UVM student work has been selected. “That’s an unheard-of track record,” says associate professor of dance Paul Besaw, at least since he’s been attending, which dates back to his own undergraduate days.

But this year, Yablonsky’s piece, "Non-Mechanical Tools of Human Advancement," was chosen not just for the regional gala, but among the top works in the country and with that the opportunity to perform it again at the National College Dance Festival at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Friday, May 25 to Sunday, May 27. Making the accomplishment more notable, the competition is open at the regional and national levels to graduate students, dance faculty and even guest artists. Of the 30 dancers performing nationally, Yablonsky, from North Haledon, N.J., is one of only six who were undergraduate students this year.

Unpacking the process

When it comes to offering interpretation, Yablonsky favors a quote by the great 20^th-century ballerina Margot Fonteyn: “I explained it when I danced it.” That fabulous contempt is an easy out that Yablonsky is actually too gracious for and that "Non-Mechanical Tools of Human Advancement" is perhaps too obscure for, despite its acclaim.

According to Besaw, the piece was not without minor debate over whether it should properly be labeled performance art or dance, a distinction that Besaw finds meritless.

“The central physical question he has is that his head is in a football helmet and he keeps falling off balance because his head keeps dragging him down to the floor,” says Besaw. “I’d say that he has this key, central movement question that everything else revolves around and for me, if you have a central kind of movement ingredient, you can call it dance.”

Yablonsky will tell you that imbalance comes from what he sees as human advancement in terms of technology and mechanization beyond what we need. “We’ve arrived at something that is nearly chaos,” he says.

Besaw’s mention of the helmet is telling about the dance as well – Yablonsky needs it. “He’s really physical. In my choreography class he would solve creative problems with this sort of attack,” Besaw says. “The thing that he lands on is this point of risk where he has a structure and inside the structure the things that he does look extremely risky, extreme sports-like.”

Yablonsky also created the sound score, which Besaw believes is what took the dance to the top. “I’m totally biased, but I think it’s brilliant,” he says. “Here is this smart guy who’s got this way with language – he’s created this running commentary that’s very thoughtful and at the same time you’ve got this really amazing, crazy, physical action, and then there is this other element which is that he’s sort of stripped down and vulnerable in a way too. So it’s got different layers to it and I think that’s what takes it from a cool piece to being just really incredible, sophisticated work.”

Arts and influence

Yablonsky’s “way with language” meshes with how he likens dance to his English major. Both, he says, are active. “You don’t have to get sweaty to read a book, but the thought and the unpacking and unpacking and repacking of a message in that art is really similar,” Yablonsky says. “It was really cool to see all the similarities between dance and literature, the different motives and ideas that are conveyed with it.”

Having taken another English major to the conference this year, Besaw sees it too. “There was something to the way they both could interpret – pull apart and put back together – taking dance toward its natural poetic end,” he says.

Since the university currently has a minor but not a major in dance, Besaw has been fascinated watching how students bring their main area of study into his classes. Last year, he says, he took two senior psychology majors and one neuroscience major to ACDFA. “They were all great researchers,” he says. “They understood the idea of a laboratory and they brought that sensibility to making work. I just loved seeing their research brains helping them out in the context of making dances.”

But if Besaw and his colleagues, who he calls the best ever – Clare Byrne, Paula Higa, Selene Colburn – are inspired by what their students bring to the classroom, they are nurturing their young program into something that seems to be transformative for students.

“Paul supported me 100 percent with this crazy idea,” says Yablonsky, who has been asked to teach a master dance class at the University of Pittsburgh, the city where he now lives. “Paul and Clare and Selene are all so innovative and committed. It is quite a thing to emerge into dance with such accomplished people. They set a climate that encourages students to be as creative as the mind can get. It’s so open.”

So Yablonsky came into dance willing to take risks, emotional and physical. And, he says, he learned a thing or two about technique. Watch the dance video and it’s hard not to think how painful it looks.

Asked if he thinks he learned how to perform it without hurting himself he says, “Yeah, a non-mechanical tool of human advancement: practice.”

Since 2005, when the university put a centralized fellowship outreach and support program in place, 89 UVM students have won or been finalists in the country’s most prestigious and competitive competitions, including the Fulbright, Rhodes, Goldwater, Marshall, Udall, Truman, Madison, Gilman, Boren, Critical Language Awards, SMART and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships.

Lessons on set

Safety Not Guaranteed is based on a classifieds ad that appeared in 1997 in Backwoods Home magazine: "WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke…You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before." The classifieds ad, popularized later on the internet, is the jumping-off point for what Trevorrow says in an interview on Sundance.org is "a movie about four characters who all need a time machine for different reasons." The film has garnered praise from the Los Angeles Times and Wired and drew spontaneous applause from the Sundance audience at its Jan. 22 premiere. But back in May, it was a low-budget film with just a hope of becoming one of the year's indie favorites.

It was a hope, Trowbridge said, that the cast and crew believed in. "The confidence on set was really high," he says. Both Trowbridge and Neuhof spent every day on set, Trowbridge assisting Trevorrow create daily shot lists and storyboarding and Neuhof wrangling passers-by and traffic to prevent ruining shots in some of the more public locations -- an important position when a low budget means every moment needs to count. Of course, both picked up the odd jobs to which unpaid interns are often accustomed: taking coffee orders, chauffeuring, clean-up and plenty of behind-the-scenes grind.

But Trowbridge is quick to point out the opportunities for making connections those situations afford. He recalls using his chauffeuring time (they covered more than 30 locations in the those four weeks) to learn what he could from people more seasoned in the business, like actors Aubrey Plaza, Jake M. Johnson and Mark Duplass. "Because of that," Trowbridge says, "I got to learn the ins and outs of their lives, and that was a completely invaluable experience. I can't say enough about learning about these people, how they got to be where they are and what they're doing now."

Neuhof, who is from Woodstock, Vt., remembers standing in for actors when the crew was lighting the set, an experience that was, well, illuminating. "It was really neat to see how you light a scene and what happens when you change the camera angle -- and how much work that takes."

This is not the only internship Trowbridge and Neuhoff have added to their resumes. In summer of 2010 and 2011, Trowbridge interned at Disney in production technology. "I was able to shoot with, and create work flows for new digital cinema cameras so future productions can come back to my work and make sure the cameras are perfect for what they're trying to do," he says. In addition to his work on 3D cameras and investigating methods of 3D piracy, Trowbridge was also tasked with producing and directing a short movie completely in-house, relying on no outsourcing. "It was a blast. I got complete creative control," he says, "and then I did a presentation for the technology executives, and they really liked it."  

Neuhoff is now beginning her own stint on the studio side of the business as an intern at Paramount Pictures assisting a producer on the talk show Dr. Phil. Even though taking the position means missing out on Sundance this week, she's grateful to add a "big studio environment" to her experiences, as well. Her time at UVM is on hold, but she plans to return and finish her degree before pursing a career in the industry.

"It's been an incredible year," Trowbridge says, "I'm glad to be back in Vermont this fall, but I'm also excited to graduate and see what happens."

Anders Christiansen ’14 was awarded a Gilman to study in Brazil for the spring 2012 semester. Christiansen is an Honors College student and an economics major in the College of Arts & Sciences. He is from East Montpelier, Vt.

Alexandria Frechette ’13 was awarded a Gilman to study in Gabone, Botswana for the spring 2012 semester. Frechette is a double sociology and political science major in the College of Arts & Sciences. Frechette is from Sanford, Maine.

Ariel Henley ‘13 was awarded a Gilman to study in the United Kingdom for the spring 2012 semester. She’ll be in Cantebury at the University of Kent as part of the Buckman Overseas Program with UVM’s English Department. Henley is double political science and English major in the College of Arts & Sciences. She is from Alamo, Calif.

Sayoko Kubotera ‘13 was awarded a Gilman to study abroad in Namibia for the spring 2012 semester. Kubotera is an animal sciences major in the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences. Kubotera is from Delmar, N.Y.

Storm Leland ’13 was awarded a Gilman to study abroad in Belize during the spring 2012 semester. Leland is a social work major in the College of Education & Social Services. Leland is from Burlington, Vt.

UVM students received a total of $20,500 in study abroad scholarship money from the Gilman awards. The Institute for International Education recently ranked the University of Vermont fifth in the nation among public doctoral universities for the percentage of its undergraduate students -- 32.5 percent -- who participate in study abroad programs. The Gilman Scholarship Program aims to diversify the kinds of students who study abroad and the countries and regions where they go. The program provides awards that allow American undergraduate students who receive federal Pell Grant funding at a two-year or four-year college or university to participate in study abroad programs worldwide.

The Gilman program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and administered by the Institute of International Education. Awards are given out each semester. The next deadline for the Gilman Scholarship for summer and fall 2012 study is March 1, 2012. For more information, contact the Office of Fellowships Advising at (802) 656-4658.