Though only one senior gets the honor of speaking at commencement, many members of the senior class have been recognized for their distinguished accomplishments at Tufts.
The Tufts University Alumni Assocation recently presented thirteen Senior Awards in recognition of seniors who have displayed academic achievement, extensive participation in activities both on campus and in the larger community, and outstanding leadership qualities. These honors went to Jennifer Bien, Daniel Callahan, Allison Collins, Shannon Gourley, Jennifer Harris, Lori Kessler, Seren Levinson, Gerald Sean McDermott, Scott Mittenthal, Alethea Pieters, Kristin Romandetti, Michele Shelton, and Kristi Tough. Collins and Levinson were also awarded Fulbrights, along with Aaron Grieser, Kelly Knee, Chris Kohler, Edwin Ortiz, Ehren Brav and Samantha Snitow.
The eight winners of Fulbright scholarships will be headed across the globe after their graduation to further their academic interests.
Kelly Knee, an graduate student in Water Resources Engineering, will head to Mauritius - an island off the coast of Madagascar - to pursue her interests in global warming, specifically sea level rise. She did a thesis on impacts of and adaptation strategies to sea level rise in metro Boston, and she hopes to carry out a similar project next year.
"Because of its size and vulnerability, Mauritius is the ideal location to research impacts of sea level rise," Knee said. "Its definitely an honor that the people administering this award think my research interests are important enough to merit a year-long research project."
Moving to Nigeria will surprisingly not be a drastic change of pace for Ehren Brav, another Fulbright Scholar, who has traveled all over the world studying and working, fulfilling his political science, math, and physics majors. Although the terrain will be new to him, he is looking forward to the experience, as are all of his colleagues.
"I'll go in with an open mind and hope that in some small way I can contribute something to the country," said Brav, who plays classical piano and has completed the Boston Marathon in 2000, and she is presently training for the next one. The trained SCUBA diver also enjoys rock climbing and travel.
"I want to work to support and empower public interest NGOs in developing nations to secure environmental safeguards, and promote policies which balance economic development and environmental stewardship," he said.
One of the older recipients of the Fulbright Scholarship this year is Aaron Grieser. An avid environmentalist, Grieser played an instrumental role in the Seattle-based WTO protests of 1999.
Chris Kohler has been given a Fulbright in journalism and hopes to spend his year in Japan writing a book on Japanese video games. A Japanese major, he wrote his senior thesis on Japanese video games and has extensive knowledge on the subject.
Kohler wrote for The Primary Source for four years and cites his first interest in Japanese being his initial interest in video games.
Fulbright winner Edwin Ortiz came to Tufts as an adult student through the Resumed Education for Adult Learners program. Ortiz was the Associate Director of Cambridge Community Television before he returned to school.
Ortiz, who ran the Boston Marathon as an official runner two years in a row, while go to Madrid next year. "My Fulbright project takes me back to where I studied during my junior year abroad and combines my interest in the arts (cinema) with my major in International relations," he said.
Samantha Snitow, will be spending the next two years in Australia. Tri-captain of the Women's Lacrosse team, Snitow has also been a tour guide coordinator for the past two and a half years and did AIDS outreach for LCS. She will be in Australia for two years, as opposed to just the customary one-year Fulbright program, to pursuing her masters degree.
Collins and Levinson have received both Fulbrights, and Senior Awards. The students who received the alumni awards represent a diverse set of academic and extracurricular interests. Allison Collins, a psychology, and biomedical engineering major who hopes to go on to Medical School, will be spending her next year in Indonesia. Collins served as president of LCS for a year and was involved with a variety of campus activities.
Seren Levinson, a child development and drama major, was recognized for her extracurricular involvement in drama and Hillel. She served as president of Torn Ticket II and performed in many plays, musical and non-musical.
She invoked a sentiment echoed by many of the other recipients when she spoke of what this award means to her. "It is wonderful to be recognized for my involvement at Tufts, as I have acquired a great deal of my education outside of the classroom," Levinson said.
"What I thought was remarkable was that we are all from such incredibly broad and diverse backgrounds," Bien said.
Bien has served on the executive board of the Musical Theater Board for three years, having also worked in the drama department on dozens of plays in various capacities. She has also committed much time to volunteering and worked with Medford children who are hard of hearing or deaf, and has served as a translator within many families.
Honoree Scott Mittenthal is a four-year football linebacker. Mittenthal plans to return to his hometown of Atlanta at the end of this semester to wait for medical school replies and hopefully volunteer at a hospital and travel. Before he returns home though, he will lead a bike tour for teenagers down the West Coast from Seattle to San Francisco.
Alethea Pieters has excelled in a variety of extracurricular pursuits during her time at Tufts. She was a member of gospel choir, the creator and co-host of TUTV's "Jumbo Love Match," and a student representative to the Board of Trustees. Pieters plans to work for United Leaders next year, a nonprofit firm that aims to inspire a new wave of leaders.
Lori Kessler, another recipient who has her sights set on graduate school for next year, expressed her excitement in being honored.
"I am thrilled to receive the honor," Kessler said. "It's pretty amazing to be given an award for something that you had so much fun doing."
Kessler was extensively involved in student Outreach and this year was the overall coordinator for April Open House. An engineering-psychology double major, Kessler found her future interests to be strongly influenced by her extracurricular activities at Tufts. She will attend Penn Graduate School next year to pursue a career as a high school counselor.
Award winner Shannon Gourley has actively pursued her interests in psychopharmacology and English literature at Tufts. Gourley has worked in a psychopharmacy lab for over two years with rats and monkeys. She worked at New England Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital as an assistant in the psychiatric emergency room. She also rose through the ranks of the TheTuftsObserver to become the managing editor and a member of the executive board.
Gourley will be taking next year off of science and attending NYU for her master's in English literature.
Kristi Tough has been a major player in the Leonard Carmichael Society the last few years, and served as vice president. She has played on the women's tennis team, been a tour guide, and has been involved with student outreach through admissions. Tough has also a Biology teaching assistant and has served as a board member of the Ex-College for two years. She has coordinated Kids to College, a national mentoring program for 6th graders to think about higher education.
A psychology major with a minor in political science, Michele Shelton has served on the Senate for three years while dividing her spare time between the senior leadership corp, the student alumni relations committee, and other university committees. This year she has worked in the Office of Student Activities as a programming assistant for leadership development.
Sean McDermott, another Senior Award recipient, has displayed a strong interest in other cultures while majoring in International Letters and Visual Studies. This fascination, he says, comes from his worldly upbringing in Egypt, Kenya, England, Dubai, as well as later years spent in France and Spain. It has also influence his choice of extracurricular activities, as McDermott served as president of the International Club his junior year.
McDermott also served as Business Manager of TLSV, a trustee representative, coordinator for the MFA 2000 Boston French Film Festival, and a member of the Student Global Aids Committee (an international student activist group), and has been an employee of the Tufts European Center in Talloires, France, where he will be this summer.
"For me, separating my academic and non-academic interests is ultimately impossible," McDermott said. "I have made it a rule - and been mostly successful - to not take any classes that don't interest me in some way."
