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The Rice Thresher
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by Rachel Shiffrin Thresher staff
Each scholarship is worth up to $15,000. The winners of the award for the 2001-'02 school year are Hanszen College junior Hassan Irshad, Wiess College sophomore Colin Elliott, Wiess senior Marisa Levy and Wiess sophomore Teresa Kubos. The graduate students selected are Jae Chung in anthropology and Ron Haas in history. Aimee Placas, an anthropology graduate student, has been named an alternate for the scholarship. The scholarship was created in the name of 1929 Rice alumnus James T. Wagoner, a veteran of World War II and an avid traveler. The first scholarships were given in 1997. Executive Director of International Programs and Scholarships Mark Scheid said the scholarship was created to make sure Rice students had ample opportunities to perform research abroad. The scholarships are funded by Wagoner's estate from an endowment that can only be used for these scholarships. "It was envisioned as kind of a Rice-only Fulbright scholarship," Scheid, assistant to the president, said. Fulbright scholarships are awarded by the federal government to college seniors and graduate students interested in researching, studying or teaching in a foreign country. To apply for the scholarship, students submitted essays detailing why they wanted to study abroad, what they planned on studying and what led them to those interests, Scheid said. The Rice Committee on Scholarships and Awards tried to choose students who would benefit the most from the experience abroad. The committee also looked for scholastic achievement, character and dedication to the subject the candidate was pursuing, Scheid said. Kubos will spend the year in Seville, Spain, to complete her Spanish major. Kubos said that although she has studied Spanish for six years, she has yet to experience the culture firsthand. "I've learned a lot about Spanish culture, but I've never been there," Kubos said. "I thought it was time to put everything I've learned into context." Kubos also hopes to become certified in teaching English as a Second Language during her year abroad, and plans on tutoring English. "When I learned Spanish, so many doors opened up for me, and if English can do that for other people, I want to give them that opportunity," she said. Levy said she will spend her year abroad in Hyderabad, India, studying the impact of mass media on post-colonial Indian identity. She is participating in a program through the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Before leaving for India, she will go to Madison and receive intensive language tutoring. She will also be set up with a language tutor and an adviser in Hyderabad. Last year, Levy studied in northern India researching the ways in which Indian women use art as a tool for social change. Her research involved studying media such as street theater and government-sponsored commercials, which piqued her interest in the impact of mass media. "India has the largest film industry in the world, and the fact that they've gained independence in the last 50 years makes them a prime candidate for observation," she said. Irshad plans on studying South African religious leaders of faith communities at the University of Capetown in South Africa, focusing on the role of religion and Christianity in rebuilding post-apartheid South Africa. Irshad said he is "interested in learning about how historians plan on dealing with the burden of a history of injustice." Elliott will study political science in Avignon, France, and hopes to improve his French while he is there. Haas will travel to Paris, France, to perform research for his dissertation on French Maoism. The Maoists were "dissident French Marxists inspired to start cultural revolution in France in the 1960s and 1970s," he said. Haas said the issue is important because the movement is not well known in the United States and has been "swept under the rug in France," he said. Haas "thought of the project as kind of an expose," he said. He will conduct his research in Nanterre, a working class suburb of Paris that grew from an immigrant shantytown. Most Maoist movements were founded in Nanterre in the late 1960s. "Very few universities have this kind of money to spend on graduate and undergraduate research," he said. Chung will spend the year in Seoul, South Korea, doing a cultural analysis of risk in venture capital industry in South Korea. She became interested in this when the Asian currency crisis emerged in 1997. "When this devastating thing happened, I knew that I wanted to study something that dealt with the globalization because of its importance in people's lives," she said. She chose to follow the progress of the venture capital industry because it developed in Asia in response to the currency crisis, she said. "It is an honor to be selected by the Wagoner Committee ... I am very grateful that such a resource is made available for projects that require traveling outside of the U.S.," Chung said.
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