by Susan Griffith

Eight CWRU graduates will travel outside the United States and engage in a wide range of activities related in their major fields with the support of the Eva L. Pancoast Memorial Fellowship. The fellowship provides women graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Graduate Studies with stipends from $1,000 to $3,500.

This year's recipients are Sahar Dar, Ramya Gurumurthy, Sonal Kishore, Claire Kovacs, Jennifer Paradise, Marwa Sabe, Marcela Smid and Natasha Zielazinski.

SAHAR DAR

Dar, who received her bachelor's degree in economics, international studies and psychology and a master's degree in bioethics, will travel to the Punjab Province of Pakistan to observe health care administration practices by shadowing the directors of the Oral Rehydration Salts, Mother and Child Health Safety and Tuberculosis programs in Lahore. She plans to spend at least three weeks in the country.

Over the past four years at CWRU, Dar developed an interest in health law, policy making and health care administration. After returning from her travel experience, she will pursue a law and management degree program that focuses on health sector.

RAMYA GURUMURTHY

Although her family comes from Chennai, India, in southern India, Gurumurthy will use her Pancoast Fellowship to travel north where she is unfamiliar with that part of the country and its national language of Hindi.

She will further her studies in medical anthropology-she earned her bachelor's degree in 2003 and is expected to receive a master's degree in 2004-by studying Vedanta and Ayurvedic medicine, found in different branches of the Hindu philosophy and culture.

Next year she will enter the CWRU School of Medicine. "My summer plans will enable me to form contacts for future medical electives and rotations in India," Gurumurthy said, adding "this summer could be the seed to a career in international health in India."

Over the summer, she will travel to Delhi, Western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and the Himalayas with the North Carolina State Study Abroad program. Through this program, she will learn the Hindi language and explore India's history, culture and contemporary issues.

SONAL KISHORE

Kishore's career goal is to be a pediatric psychiatrist. At commencement, she was awarded her bachelor's degree in psychology. This summer, she will engage in a three-month internship with the World Health Organization of South-East Asia (WHO-SEA).

She will work in a psychiatric hospital outside of New Delhi, India, and assist staff and physicians in developing a questionnaire on psychoses that will help the hospital staff assess and make a tentative diagnosis. She also will observe patients in the hospital setting to view cultural differences in treatment and then discuss with the health care workers about where they need more mental health research.

Kishore notes that an "underlying ambition is to develop an enriched understanding of a culture that has significantly influenced the person I am."

CLAIRE KOVACS

"Countless people visit the Sistine Chapel annually to marvel at the frescoes that adorn its wall and ceiling," Kovacs said. But few people look down and examine the floor.

Kovacs, who earned a bachelor's degree in art history, set out to find out more about the floor in 2002 to write a paper for her Sixteenth Century Italian Art class. That paper subsequently was presented at the Portland Art Museum's Student Symposium in Portland, Ore.

"I set forth the unique idea that the floor design was dictated by the liturgy of the Catholic mass and may have influenced Michelangelo's design of the famous ceiling," Kovacs said.

While she has written about this overlooked part of the chapel and her work has met with interest from art historians here and elsewhere, she has never seen the chapel. Her Pancoast Fellowship will allow her to see the Sistine Chapel as well as the Florence Cathedral, Cathedral of Siena, the Church at Pomposa and the Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal in San Minato and enable her to make comparisons between floor and ceiling designs related to the liturgy.

Kovacs said she plans to write a paper about her findings and publish it.

JENNIFER PARADISE

Paradise, a 2003 CWRU graduate in theater arts, will learn more about the theater this summer as the stage manager for the production of Don Giovanni in Urbania, Italy, that is being staged under the direction of Michael McConnell from Oberlin College.

While Paradise-the first in her family to attend college-started her postsecondary education determined to be a doctor, she found herself "inspired by and driven to the theater."

"The theater's ability to alter mood and touch lives, even if only indirectly and momentarily, is a powerful way to affect people's experiences," she said.

Paradise added that "it is the ability to connect with complete strangers in the darkness of the theater that drives my passion for this art form-its power to divide the audience during the controversial moments and unite us in the cathartic. "

MARWA SABE

A course in health psychology at American University in Cairo, Egypt, fall semester changed her life. For the first time, Sabe said she found a way to combine her interest in psychology and health.

This summer, she returns to Cairo with her Pancoast Fellowship as a research assistant on a project with Cairo National Cancer Institute.

Cancer is a word that many in the Egyptian culture consider "evil" and cannot even utter, according to Sabe.

When she first arrives, she will observe other researchers but eventually will have the opportunity to talk to children with terminal cancer and their families and dispel any misconceptions about the disease.

"This opportunity is very important to me as I am interested in pediatric cardiology and so will need the skills to work with terminally and chronically ill children in the future," Sabe said.

MARCELA SMID

Smid will spend eight weeks collaborating with Trudy Thomas from Rhodes University, the University of Cape Town (UCT) Social Anthropology Department and the UCT HIV/AIDS and Society Research Unit in Eastern Cape, South Africa. She will conduct a field research project in a Xhosa-speaking community.

Trained in medical anthropology research techniques, Smid will observe and interview pregnancy and childbirth care in clinical and home settings to learn how traditional and clinical care intersect in these women's lives. She also will look at ways available to prevent or treat HIV/AIDS among the mothers and their unborn children.

She will start her research in a clinic in Reitvlei, Mzimkul, which has a testing site for the medication nevirapine. Nevirapine reduces HIV transmission from mother to child during pregnancy and labor.

If her time in the country permits, she also plans to view traditional midwives and healers in a local village.

NATASHA ZIELAZINSKI

In January, Zielazinski traveled to Lima, Peru, for the XVIII International Festival Suzuki where she encountered and taught young music students eager to learn to play cello.

Her experience in Peru was so fulfilling, Zielazinski said, that she has considered starting a Suzuki cello program in Cuzco, Peru, in the Andes mountains upon her completion of a master's degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Currently there is no program there.

An internship this summer with Anikka Petrozzi, the current director of the Suzuki Association of Peru, will help prepare her for the future. As an assistant to Caroline Fraser, a piano teacher, Zielazinski will learn the business side of a music school.

She will spend approximately five hours a day, which includes teaching cello in the afternoon after school.

 

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