Accomplishments and Career Updates
Wendy Herrera '09
Wendy Herrera is a 2009 recipient of the Samuel Huntington Public Service Award, a $10,000 grant for graduating seniors to pursue one year of public service anywhere in the world. Through this fund she will be coordinating a one year, sanitation campaign in the village of Usa River, Tanzania. The project will involve the implementation of fifty composting toilets in an area where access to improved sanitation does not exist. Through the use of composting toilets the community will prevent groundwater contamination, while also providing a source of safe, free fertilizer for local farmers.
Benjamin Stevens '08
Anthropology major Benjamin Stevens '08 is the recipient of the J.V. Cunningham Award for Excellence in Writing in the category of Social Science. A copy of Ben's paper "On Jakobson, and Cicero's 'In Cataliam'" is available on reserve in the Writing Center in Goldfarb Library.
Aduei Riak '08 and Crystal Trulove '07
Anthropology students Aduei Riak '08, working with Professor Mark Auslander, and Crystal Trulove '07, working with Professor David Jacobson, received Schiff awards for 2006-07. This is a research program for sophomores, juniors or seniors, together with a faculty sponsor, which spans the summer and/or academic year.
Jefferson Arak '07
Jeff Arak '07 was a 2005 Jane's Travel Grant recipient. He spent the summer of 2005 on his research in Chiapas, Mexico, and made a documentary film of his work: Those With Voice (Los Con Voz). Jeff graduated with highest honors in Latin American and Latino Studies and Anthropology and received the Betty and Harry S. Shapiro Endowed Award in Anthropology. In 2007 with $10,000 Project for Peace Grant from the Davis Foundation Jeff returned to Oaxaca to build a media center and teach filmmaking workshops.
Daniel Duffy '07, Joshua Rosenthal '07 and Dana Sawitz '08
Three anthropology students were selected as Ethics Center Student Fellows in 2006. Fellows develop internship projects of their own and implement them in international organizations of their choosing. They engage in projects that encourage education, communication and healing in cities around the world. The three fellows were:
Daniel Duffy ’07 of Boalsburg, Pa., an anthropology major with minors in Latin American studies and English. Daniel is a core member of the Radical Student Alliance at Brandeis and has been involved in starting the Brandeis Fair Trade Brigade as well as the national Student Trade Justice Campaign. Awarded the Karpf Peace Grant, he spent the spring of 2005 in Grenada working with the Grenada Education and Development Programme and researching grassroots community-development organizations. Daniel spent the summer in Chiapas, Mexico, working with Red de Comunicadores Boca de Polen, an indigenous media networking organization.Joshua Rosenthal '07 of Akron, Ohio, is a double-major in anthropology and politics. A Justice Brandeis Scholar, Joshua is past president and current programming coordinator for Brit Tzedek v’Shalom; an active member of the Brandeis Labor Coalition; and founding member of Waltham Links, a club devoted to developing connections between the Brandeis and Waltham communities along political, artistic and social lines. Active in the political realm, Joshua was an intern for the Deval Patrick for Governor Committee. He worked with the Access to Information Programme Foundation in Sofia, Bulgaria, assisting with civic education and government transparency in this developing democracy.
Dana Sawitz ’08 of Beacon, N.Y., majored in anthropology and minored in international and global studies. Dana volunteered for four summers in the impoverished coal-mining communities in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, one of the poorest regions in the United States. A member of Brandeis' cheerleading squad, she was also involved in Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND) and served as an English as a Second Language tutor. Her internship in Dakar, Senegal, with the West African Research Center involved supporting literacy by increasing the printed materials available in indigenous African languages, particularly human-rights documents.