Antonieta Cal y Mayor (Fulbright, Mexico,
M.A., 2006, TESOL, Columbia Univ.
Teachers College) was selected as a delegate
to represent Mexico at the 56th Annual Student
Conference on United States Affairs,
which took place at the U.S. Military Academy
in West Point, New York. Thirty-two international
students from 23 countries were
invited to the November 2004 conference to
discuss global issues and formulate U.S. foreign
policy proposals alongside West Point
cadets and more than 200 American undergraduates.
In the summer of 2004, Joy-Dee Davis (OAS, Antigua and Barbuda, M.A., 2005,
law and diplomacy, Tufts Univ.) completed
an internship in the Democratic Republic of
Congo through the Refugees and Forced
Migration Program, a Tufts Univ. initiative.
Davis worked with the Alchemy Project,
which funds educational and microfinance
opportunities for refugees and internally displaced
persons in African countries. As a
component of the project, Tufts graduate students
spend a summer interning with Alchemy
NGO partners, helping to evaluate the
microlending efforts. Davis was hosted by the
Jesuit Refugee Service, an international
NGO that oversees refugee camps. Davis observed
and interviewed residents of two
camps in and around Kinshasa, the capital
city of the Democratic Republic of Congo,
to assess the impact on their livelihoods of
microfinance loans, grants, and training.
Currently, Davis is in the second year of her
master’s degree program at the Fletcher
School at Tufts.
Orlando Hernández (Fulbright–COLCIENCIAS,
Colombia, Ph.D., 2006, geophysics,
Ohio State Univ.) traveled to the Western
Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Honolulu,
Hawaii, in August 2004 to give a poster presentation
entitled “Generalized isostatic analysis
of the Andes Mountains in northwestern
South America” (with R.R.B. von Frese,
M. Asgharzadeh, and T. Leftwich). In their
research, Hernández and his colleagues analyzed
the gravity anomalies of the Nazca–
North Andes plate boundary zone to learn
more about the geodynamic processes of
northwestern South America, including the
deformation of the earth’s crust due to continental
and oceanic plate movements.
During her academic program, Anika Keens-Douglas (OAS, Grenada, M.A., 2005, policy
analysis and evaluation, Georgia State
Univ.) has been volunteering as a mentor
with In2Books, a non-profit literacy program
based in Washington, D.C. The program
motivates students in grades 2–5 to read,
think, and write by matching them with
adult mentors called pen pals. The students
and their pen pals discuss important subjects
through letters about thought-provoking
books. Keens-Douglas was assigned three
boys between the ages of 7 and 9 and says
that it has been “amazing to watch the rapport,
writing skills, and overall comprehensive
ability of students grow with each new book, letter, or subject discussed as the year
progresses. It is a rewarding experience.”
Keens-Douglas is also in the process of completing
three journal manuscripts for publication,
including one on the importance of
raising the level of mental health care to the
same level as physical health care, based on a
system-of-care assessment by the Center for
Mental Health Services of the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services.
In August 2004, Sardis Medrano-Cabral (Fulbright–OAS Ecology, Dominican Republic,
M.A., 2005, entomology, Montana
State Univ.) co-authored a presentation (with
her advisor, M. Ivie) for the XXII International
Congress of Entomology held in
Brisbane, Australia. Their presentation, entitled
“Endemicity Rates in the West Indian
Hotspots,” discussed the endemicity of various
species of June beetles in the Caribbean.
Through written observations and sketches,
Medrano-Cabral hopes to document more
than 50 agriculturally destructive yet currently
unidentified species of June beetles from
the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Two folk tales, “Anancy Does a Good Turn”
and “The Donkey and the Toad,” written by
Marilyn O’Brien (OAS, Dominica, M.S.,
2005, teacher education, Barry Univ.) will be published by Ladybird, a British children’s
book publisher. During her program,
O’Brien has served as a Caribbean advisor to
the U.K. branch of Longman Publishers on
the Keskidee series of integrated language arts
books for children in the Caribbean. After
the completion of her program, O’Brien says
her greatest wish is to “continue working in
an arena where children will be given a fair
chance at performing at their true potential,
especially in the area of reading. In light of
this, I intend to return to my island to play
an active role in the continued literacy of our
students.” O’Brien has been a teacher for the
last 19 years and was recently appointed
learning support advisor for the Ministry of
Education in Dominica.
In October 2004, Román Sarmiento Porras (Fulbright–COLCIENCIAS, Colombia,
M.A., 2005, education, Southern Illinois
Univ.) gave a presentation at the 2004 Association
for Education Communications and
Technology (AECT) International Convention
in Chicago, Illinois. Sarmiento’s presentation
(with P. Fadde and A. Barrett) was
entitled “How Real Does Virtual Reality
Training Really Need to Be? (Variables of Display
and Input in Media-based Simulation).”
AECT’s mission is to provide international
leadership by promoting scholarship and best
practices in the creation, use, and management
of technologies for effective teaching
and learning in a wide range of settings.
As president of the Georgia Institute of Technology
chapter of the Financial Management
Association, an international organization that
develops and disseminates knowledge about
financial decision-making, Jean Pierre Serani (Fulbright–Suramericana, Colombia, MBA,
2005, business administration, finance, and
management, Georgia Inst. of Technology)
co-hosted a visit to Georgia Tech’s College of
Management by Warren Buffett, CEO and
chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Buffet answered
student questions on corporate governance,
executive pay levels, hedge funds, business
outsourcing, derivative markets, and
demographic shifts, as well as discussing his
personal successes and failures.
In May 2004, Miguel Hirschhaut (FUNDAYACUCHO,
Venezuela, long-term research,
1995, orthodontics, Univ. of Pennsylvania) gave a lecture entitled “The Role of
Orthodontics in Interdisciplinary Treatment”
at the 104th Annual Session of the American
Association of Orthodontists in Orlando,
Florida. Hirschhaut has given over 70 lectures
at medical conferences in Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Peru, the United States, and Venezuela
and has published 25 papers in various
orthodontic journals. From 2000 to
2002, Hirschhaut served as the secretary general
of the Sociedad Venezolana de Ortodoncia.
He now has his own practice in Caracas,
Venezuela.
Graciela Mercedes Labarthe (Fulbright, Argentina,
M.A., 1999, anthropology, Binghamton
Univ.) was invited by the government
of the province of Salta, Argentina, to display
her visual ethnography of the Coal Basin of
Río Turbio. The photos were exhibited in
September 2004 at the Casa de la Cultura in
the city of Salta, where Labarthe also participated
in several related conferences. Through
a series of 160 photographs, the ethnography
depicts life in the Coal Basin mining villages,
including the affects of globalization on coal
miners. The collection highlights the daily
lives of the workers and the local knowledge
of the villagers. The exhibit was funded by
Fundación CAPACITAR del NOA, a governmental
organization that promotes science
and technology in the Salta region. Labarthe
has had previous exhibits in Río Turbio and
Río Gallegos, sponsored by the Univ. Nacional
de la Patagonia Austral campuses in each
city and by the Secretaría de Cultura of the
Municipality of Río Gallegos.
Juan René Núñez (Fulbright, El Salvador,
M.S., 2004, healthcare technologies management,
Marquette Univ.) serves on the board
of trustees of the Asociación Salvadoreña de
Ingeniería Hospitalaria (ASIH), a professional
engineering association that promotes
safer, standardized healthcare through the
regulation and development of hospital engineering.
Núñez also teaches several courses
focused on effective management of healthcare
technology at Univ. Don Bosco (UDB)
and is helping to create a new master’s degree
program in clinical engineering at the
University. He is working with UDB colleagues
on development projects that include
extending biomedical education services to
students from other Central American countries
and creating a new unit at UDB that
provides technical assistance to the Ministerio
de Salud Pública y Asistencia Social.
Hubert Sylney (Fulbright, Haiti, M.A.,
1995, agribusiness economics, Southern Illinois
Univ. Carbondale) was recently hired as
the director of the Haitian Education and
Leadership Program (HELP), an organization
that provides college scholarships to financially
disadvantaged Haitian high school
students. Prior to his work with HELP,
Sylney worked for the U.S. Peace Corps in
Haiti for seven years, managing a microenterprise
technical support program that trains
low-income Haitian entrepreneurs.
In May 2004, the Directorate-General for
Development Cooperation, a branch of the
Belgian Department of Foreign Affairs dedicated
to bilateral cooperation, awarded one
of its annual prizes to Felix Wing (Fulbright,
Panama, M.A., 2004, law, American Univ.).
The prize honors scholars for their written
contributions toward sustainable development
and poverty alleviation in developing
countries. Wing received the award for his
master’s thesis, “Derecho, Ambiente y Desarrollo:
El caso de los rellenos sobre la Bahía
de Panamá,” which analyzed basic environmental
regulations and their effect on Panamanian
law. The Minister of Development
Cooperation presented the 19 awardees with
their prizes at a formal ceremony in the Royal
Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren,
Belgium.
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