Heather Lindstrom, a doctoral candidate in anthropology who is examining the effects of modernization on elders' social status in Samoa, has been awarded the inaugural Richard A. Zdanis Endowment Fund Fellowship.

Heather Lindstrom

Friends, faculty and staff contributed gifts and pledges of more than $100,000 to establish the Richard A. Zdanis Graduate Fellowship in honor of Zdanis, who retired in 2000 after serving 12 years as University provost.

"It's been a real honor and privilege," Lindstrom said. "I can't tell you how surprised I was just to be nominated."

The fellowship for doctoral candidates was awarded following a School of Graduate Studies-wide competition last fall. Each academic department in the School of Graduate Studies nominated one doctoral candidate for the award, and applications were reviewed by a faculty committee.

"The Zdanis award is a really unique award because it is for a Ph.D. candidate who is nearing the end of their academic journey but still may need to go into the field one more time or conduct one more experiment," Lindstrom said. "And it is sometimes difficult to find funding for dissertation research in the social sciences."

The $5,000 discretionary fellowship will support Lindstrom's data analysis of those 280 interviews and dissertation writing activities.

"I had so many good experiences in Samoa," she said. "The feeling of openness, that people were willing to talk about their life experiences, was tremendous."

In addition to examining the effects of modernization on elders' social status in Samoa, Lindstrom also is investigating how modernization can be measured in Samoa and elsewhere and whether those elders living in areas with higher levels of modernization receive less respect and have less influence over family and cultural resources.

Lindstrom's doctoral adviser, Cynthia Beall, CWRU's Sarah Idell Pyle Professor of Anthropology, nominated her for the Zdanis award.

"Heather Lindstrom is an exceptional social scientist with interdisciplinary training and skills and a high likelihood of making innovative additions to knowledge of important social phenomena," Beall said in her nomination letter. "The combination of intellect, training, determination, problem-solving and social skills contribute to her outstanding promise."

A research assistant with the University Memory and Aging Center working with Professor Peter Whitehouse, Lindstrom also is interested in how a particular elder's health and functional and cognitive abilities modify their status and influence. At the Memory and Aging Center, she is involved in a variety of projects related to Alzheimer's disease and associated disorders.

Lindstrom earned integrated bachelor's and master's degrees in anthropology from CWRU in 1993.

She first began her studies of the function and status of elders in Samoa in 1992 while an undergraduate in the Medical Anthropology Mann Scholars Summer Fellowship program. She also won a Phi Beta student research grant while an undergraduate.
After a year of graduate coursework at the State University New York in Albany,

Lindstrom returned to American Samoa in 1994 and spent six months as a field coordinator for a cardiovascular disease study. She then was hired by the Department of Public Health in American Samoa and worked for two years developing public health programs and writing grants.

In 1996 Lindstrom came back to Cleveland and CWRU to begin work on her doctorate. In addition to the Zdanis award, she has received a National Science Foundation dissertation improvement grant to help fund her research and two Phi Beta Kappa student research grants.

Lindstrom expects to finish her dissertation this year and plans to return to work in the field of public health. She does not rule out returning to Samoa for additional research but said she would like to be based in the states this time-in a job that includes international components.

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