Synaptic Scholars Hold End of Year Presentations

As far as my initial proposal to explore the cognitive science behind school design, this year was largely a break from education in terms of policy, after working at DC Public Schools central office this past summer. Still, I have continued to work on the Inquiry program for EPIIC, and hope to take next year’s program to the next level.  I have also tried to focus this semester on community-building here at Tufts, through my work bridging OneWorld and Synaptic Scholars to organize the Tufts Idea Exchange (TEX).  Following up on my informal work (largely last semester) to bridge gaps between student groups concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I was planning on spending the summer in Middlebury’s intensive 8-week Arabic Language School.  With those plans falling through due to some financial aid confusion, I have decided to take a course here and invest some time in recuperating my original proposal. 

 

This semester, I continued my immigration reform activism with the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition and the Student Immigrant Movement. Networking and classes that I’ve taken this semester have helped me refine my research plans for Spring 2012 in Mexico. In June, I plan to take a couple of courses at Tufts, go on adventures, and read a lot about Chile in preparation for my departure in July.

 

This semester I started in earnest my work on the New Ethic Initiative, a program dedicated to fostering the “new ethic” of global, active leadership in rural school communities.  I finished the proposal, and am in the process of soliciting critical feedback.  As it stands, I plan on extending the proposal process for the next two years.  I have concluded that the New Ethic Initiative is perhaps too ambitious in the context of the time frame I had initially adopted.  However, I plan on seeing the proposal process through, and will have the final proposal completed during my senior year.  I fully plan on executing this proposal post-college, if critical feedback is largely positive, and if I can identify multiple enthusiastic financial backers.  Given this reevaluation of program objectives, I have decided to reorient my work with The New Ethic.  To that end, I have restructured The New Ethic as an umbrella organization for multiple, more “achievable” objectives, that still engage with my passions of rural and 21st Century education.  I will be interning at the Mansfield Center this summer and will be working heavily on the Mansfield Seminar, a monthly student lecture and discussion series that aims to engage high school students in global issues. I plan on greatly expanding the work the Center has already done on this proposal.  My second NEI project involves a social media website tentatively title, “Build Your Roots.”  This website aims to promote civic engagement amongst college students in assisting their local communities.  The motto of the website is, “Returning the favor.”  Effectively, the website will act as a forum for students who have left their local communities to assist members of their local communities, either in giving advice, or volunteering their time and skills.

 

This semester’s activities can be grouped into three “tracks”: 

 

Civilian-military relations in the humanitarian field (World Conference on Humanitarian Studies, “Professionalizing the Humanitarian Sector”); 

Animal rights (HSUS, MA animal confinement bills); 

Veterans/ALLIES (IAVA, transition contacts to next year’s group). 

 

At this point in time, I intend to build my project within the first theme (civ-mil relations in the humanitarian field). I will spend 8 weeks this summer at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA, where I will help with research on the effect of gang violence and extremism on communities. Next year at LSE, I will hopefully continue with the sector professionalization work both online and through our UK partners there. I have also been in touch with ES-KO, a humanitarian-military logistics contractor based in London, and will shadow a few members of their staff once I arrive. In the long-term, possible project outcomes include a senior thesis, a conference, and/or a published paper.

 

Vasundhara is a sophomore who finally declared a major this year! She will be majoring in International Relations with a focus on the Middle East and South Asia, with a possible double major in History. Over winter break, she had the opportunity to travel to Egypt and Jordan, in fact a week before the revolution in Egypt began, returning to the Middle East after nearly 7 years (the last trip being to Dubai). She was given a unique perspective and insight into the local lives of the people, while being able to view a plethora of architectural and historical marvels. She has also been selected as an Oslo Scholar, to attend the Oslo Freedom Forum, a human rights conference that will be held this May in Oslo, after which she will join Justine Hardy (one of the speakers at the Forum) in Kashmir to work with her NGO that works with mental health issues in conflict zones.

 

It’s time for soup!  Non-traditional it may be -- alas, it’s getting warmer out! -- soup is good for the soul.  (Fun fact: Emily has had less than 10 spoonfuls of soup in her life).  Today, Emily will be guiding you through the recipe for her Spring Semester Soup.  Of course, this will include plenty of vegetables -- locally and organically grown only, please.  It will also include some farmers, development, plans, decisions, gut feelings, and a home-made uncertainty versus semi-blind faith argument. Needless to say, these tasty ingredients will be floating in Emily’s infamous question broth. Bon appetit!

 

During this past semester, I have focused on networking with professionals within the proprietary quantitative trading field in order to gain a better perspective on how best to think about my project.  This has helped develop a firm basis for the upcoming months during which I begin to start creating my algorithm.  In addition to writing this algorithm, during the upcoming months, I also plan on continuing to network with professionals to aid in both overcoming obstacles and to gain more perspective. 

 

As of now, this past semester has left me unsure about where my interests in public health will take me. I did enjoy my IRC course for the skills that it taught me; we will see if these skills come to fruition for a thesis or research trip. On the other side, my interests in music have come to the forefront. I immensely enjoyed my music courses, and vocally, I am progressing well and very excited about my joint recital (shameless plug: May 8th - 1 PM - Distler!). Currently, music seems to be a likely career choice, whether in musicology or vocal performance. To that end, I am doing a program in June called Songfest. In July and August, I will be living in Boston, continuing my work-study position at Programs Abroad, and singing in the Tanglewood Festival Chorus with the BSO at Tanglewood on weekends.

 

Sarah has been busy studying animation and film theory, and developing her upcoming feature-length film for her synaptic project. She has recently decided that her synaptic project will be a portfolio of stories and films exploring the intersections of fantasy, trauma, and mental illness. This summer, she will be interning for Vh1 in production, and taking courses in animation.

 

 

This year, Taylor continued to work toward his major medium-term goals: acceptance to law school, building skills in policy work, and seeking likeminded individuals for conversation and networking.  To those ends, he concentrated heavily on his studies, with classes on the history of financial crises, American legislative policymaking, and international migration.  He continued serving as Co-Chair of the IR Director’s Leadership Council, where he organized the IR Policy & Research Contest and the IR Miniconference.  Toward the year’s end, Taylor began collaborating with the Institute of Political Citizenship to found a new group dedicated to the American public policy debate, set to start fully next year.  While working with the IPC, Taylor accepted an offer to take over the group’s leadership for the next year, where he hopes to coordinate dialogue around the 2012 elections.  This summer, he will be working for Senator Patrick Leahy in Washington, D.C. and taking the LSAT.

 

As a reminder, I have been very interested in Food Security and Nutrition issues in Guatemala. Last summer I did research with a colleague on the role and perspectives of governmental and non-governmental organizations in approaching food security. I am at an exciting point in my project, where I am solidifying my research trip this summer that will (hopefully) result in my Senior Thesis. I will be looking at the interface between nutrition educators and women in the indigenous communities of Totonicapán, Guatemala. I will be focusing on conservatism and areas of most need with regards to nutritional education as expressed by the educators and the indigenous women. I am learning K'iche', the indigenous language of the area, which I hope will be of help over the summer. While the final product my senior year will be a thesis, I am trying to find ways to integrate my experiences and connections into smaller, more open projects over the year.

 

After seven-and-a-half months traveling in India, China and South Korea, Lillian was excited but somewhat nervous to dive into her first non-pre-med semester at Tufts.  Despite her initial reservations about it, this term was crucially important for Lillian in terms of developing her senior thesis and post-graduation plans.  This semester, Lillian applied for and received an Anne E. Borghesani Memorial Prize, and, thanks to additional financial support from the IGL, her thesis research this summer will be fully funded!  In preparation for conducting that research, Lillian contacted a hospital in Northeastern China where she hopes to shadow and interview physicians working with terminal patients.  She is currently in the process of submitting her IRB proposal and organizing logistics for that research trip.  In recent weeks, Lillian also began attending the Friday Morning Seminar at Harvard -- a weekly anthropology-based lecture and discussion series for academics and medical professionals from various fields.  Not only is the Friday Morning Seminar tremendously enriching on an intellectual level, but attending it each week also allows Lillian to meet and connect with prominent anthropologists whose research is directly relevant to her own.  With the help of her thesis advisor, Sarah Pinto, Lillian also finally arranged to meet with Arthur Kleinman in the next few weeks to discuss her research and her plans for graduate study.  This semester, Lillian also expanded her literature review for her thesis, began looking into anthropology PhD programs, helped organize the Tufts Idea Exchange, reconnected with friends after being abroad, and academically pushed herself by taking five classes related to her thesis work….She is naively hoping that next semester will be a little less of a whirlwind, and that she can successfully avoid being squished by her fall course load!

 

This semester was quite a fulfilling semester for Shayan, both in terms of academics and otherwise. He took six very diverse courses ranging from two computer science courses to a creative writing class. He followed up on his linguistics class last semester with a research assistant position with the Psycholinguistics and Linguistics Lab, researching the application of artificial neural networks in language comprehension. What started as a single project for Synaptics has now spun various projects motivated by his work last summer, all with the theme of technology for development. The high point of Shayan’s semester was presenting about his primary project AwaazNet at the Tufts Idea Exchange which was a humbling and inspiring experience. For the summer, Shayan is deciding between working in Washington state and Washington DC.

 

For my presentation I will discuss the non-profit organization I seek to begin for my final project.  My tentative name for the non-profit is “Extending Families.” This organization will help supply funding for LGBT refugees. I have developed a strong concept for the organization and look forward to starting it up. Over this past semester I have been in touch with other organizations working to help this vulnerable population in other capacities about the specific needs of LGBT refugees I could help sponsors to finance. Over this summer I will be interning and taking courses, though I want ensure that I have all of the necessary tools to apply for funding and support in the fall. I would like to learn about more grant opportunities and what I will need to complete before I can get started. I think I could benefit enormously from working with others who have started non-profits and who have the time to point me in the right direction.

 

In the last four months I completed three weeks of field study, climbed two long-standing projects, ran a marathon, and successfully applied for a grant to work on a project merging the two for next summer.  I worked hard to develop two major components of my life, my climbing and my geologic experience.  But I’ve wondered a lot lately....do I do one in order to do the other?