May
21, 2004
MHC
Alumnae Association Awards 2004 Fellowships
Jennifer Mehaffey
FP |
Like most MHC seniors,
Jennifer Mehaffey FP gets a lot of mail this time of year.
For Mehaffey, who is also busy applying to law schools, the
end-of-year deluge of notices and reminders sometimes gets “filed,” temporarily
unopened, in the passenger seat of her Honda Civic. So, when
the College Street Journal contacted Mehaffey as one
of the recipients of this year’s Alumnae Association Fellowships,
Mehaffey was a little incredulous. “I said, ‘Oh
my gosh! I have to find that letter,’” she recalled.
Indeed, there in her car was the unopened letter informing
Mehaffey that she has been awarded the 2004 Mary Woolley Fellowship,
which carries a stipend of $7,500.
Mehaffey is one of 22 recipients of this year’s group of Alumnae Association
Fellowships. Awarded annually to Mount Holyoke graduates of all ages as well
as current seniors, the fellowships, says Alumnae Association executive director
Rochelle Calhoun ’83, “offer encouragement for alums to continue
to work intellectually and creatively on those things they’re most passionate
about.”
The six Alumnae Association Fellowships—five of which are endowed, and
a sixth, the Mary Woolley, which comes directly from association funds—have
supported Mount Holyoke graduates in a wide range of endeavors. This year, approximately
$46,500 was granted for projects ranging from dissertation research to graduate
studies, writing projects, professional development, and foreign travel. The
Mary E. Woolley Fellowship is the largest single award. Other awards average
approximately $1,500.
According to Calhoun, the association received more than 130 proposals this year.
The Committee on Fellowships, which judges proposals, looks first for merit and
creativity, but beyond these considerations, Calhoun said, “we want to
know, will this money make the difference? We want to enable that person who
has a great idea or a great opportunity.”
For Mehaffey, the Mary Woolley Fellowship will make all the difference when she
enters law school this fall. Mehaffey, whose path to Mount Holyoke was “a
tumultuous, convoluted journey,” wrote in her fellowship application about
her experiences here, “and how much it would mean to get a chance to go
on.” When she found out that she had won this fellowship, Mehaffey said, “I
thought, it’s wonderful, it’s absolutely wonderful. But more than
that, there was this sense of, ‘Wow, I’m really doing this. I’m
really on this journey.’”
2004 Alumnae Association Fellows
A master’s degree candidate in human development at Pacific
Oaks College, Oakland, California, Gail
H. Jack ’66 will
use the 1905 Fellowship to fund her final three credits for master’s
thesis preparation. Jack wrote that she “plans to teach
at the community college level in early childhood education.”
The Hannum-Warner Travel Fellowship will help Faris Hall
Cassell ’68 travel to Vienna this fall to continue research on an archival letter she came
across from a Jewish family to a family living in Los Angeles. Written in 1939,
the letter asked for help in obtaining a visa to America. Cassell wrote, “The
deepest mystery this story raises is an ancient, timeless one that has always been
difficult to answer. Who is my neighbor? Whom do I help? What happens when
we reach out to someone in need? What are the consequences when we do not?” This
will be Cassell’s first book.
Amzie K. Sullivan ’68 leads Help Increase the Peace Program (HIPP) workshops
for middle school students and community members. Sullivan will put her 1905
Fellowship toward stipends for community members to take the HIPP training. “This
fellowship will help diversify this program and give it a wider influence in
the community,” wrote Sullivan.
The 1905 Fellowship will support the work of Holly L.
Tank ’70 in and
around Washington, DC, as she continues her research on twentieth-century African
American artists in the nation’s capital, with special interest in the
role of Howard University and the Barnett Aden Gallery, the first black-owned
and
-operated art gallery in the United States. Tank’s plans include the
construction of a database as well as a Web site for scholars and the general
public. She also plans to conduct interviews for a future documentary film
on the same topic.
Shirley Cowin Hickey ’73 is working toward the requirements for the National
Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification. “The process
is very demanding, time consuming, and expensive,” wrote Hickey. “In
the future I plan to keep my pedagogical skills honed and to keep on doing
the best job in the world—teaching in the public schools. Next year will
be my nineteenth year of teaching.”
The Dr. Mary P. Dole Medical Fellowship will help Robyn
Thomsen Calisti ’84 attain her master’s degree in music therapy. “My goal is to work
in a medical facility with individuals of all ages battling life-threatening
illnesses,” wrote Calisti, a violinist who minored in music at Mount
Holyoke. Calisti was led to this career change when a reintroduction to her
music became a critical event in her healing process after a diagnosis of cancer.
Art historian Lisa Strong ’88 hopes to return to academia after time
away to be with her infant son. The 1905 Fellowship will help her finish writing
two articles on artists Alfred Jacob Miller and George Catlin. Strong wrote, “If
the articles get accepted at good journals, that will improve my chances on
the job market next year.”
A doctoral candidate in sociology at New York University, Danielle
Anne Bessett ’96 will use the Dr. Mary P. Dole Medical Fellowship to support her dissertation
on the construction of “normality” in pregnancy.
Micaela D. Cordoba ’97 will use the 1905 Fellowship to support a film/video
project.
The 1905 Fellowship will support dissertation research for Christiana
M. Croegaert ’97,
a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at Northwestern University. Croegaert
is studying Bosnian Muslims who relocated to Chicago during the Yugoslavian
wars of the 1990s.
Suzanna Schott ’97 works in the field of genetic counseling and is studying
for a master’s degree at Johns Hopkins’ National Human Genome Institute.
The Dr. Mary P. Dole Medical Fellowship will help fund a course of study in
medical and conversational Spanish language in Baltimore and Costa Rica. “I
feel that proficiency in Spanish is essential to being a health care provider
in the United States,” wrote Schott.
The Hannum-Warner Travel Fellowship will help Shanthi
Divakaran ’98 fund
travel to Sri Lanka so that she can offer consulting services to a nonprofit
organization in that country.
Maura Camosse ’00 is in the master’s program in land resources
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her thesis looks at the land-redistribution
process that has been going on in South Africa since the end of apartheid.
The Bardwell Memorial Fellowship will enable Camosse to travel to South Africa. “I
spent a year in South Africa as an undergraduate at MHC and I am very excited
that I get to go back,” wrote Camosse.
Choreographer Rain Ross ’00 will use her 1905 Fellowship to support the
continued growth and development of her Seattle and Bainbridge Island, Washington,
dance company, Lehua Dance Theatre.
Anya Jette Christiansen ’01 will use the Bardwell Memorial Fellowship
to further her work in international human rights, advocacy, and scholarship.
In October, Leigh T. Denault ’01 will enter the Ph.D. program in history
at the University of Cambridge. The Frances Mary Hazen Fellowship will support
her studies there, which will focus on perceptions of home and society in eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century British India.
For Sophia T. Ghebremicael ’01, the Dr. Mary P. Dole Medical Fellowship
will support studies in osteopathic medicine at Western University of Health
Sciences in Pomona, California.
The Bardwell Fellowship will be supporting the work of Marielle
Lauren Amrhein ’03 and Christiana Lee
Axelsen ’03 in contemporary dance choreography, performance,
and production, as well as using art as a mode for building community. The
project will take place in Seattle, Washington, and San Francisco, California.
The two, along with other Five College Dance alumnae, hope to start a dance
collective that regularly does projects such as this.
Indika Senanayake ’03 will use the funds from the Bardwell Memorial Fellowship
and the 1905 Fellowship to support her studies at Columbia University, School
of the Arts, as she works toward an M.F.A. in acting. Senanayake hopes to apply
these skills, she wrote, “in a variety of cultural contexts, initiating,
facilitating and participating in performance that enables transformation for
individuals and communities.”
One of two seniors to receive an Alumnae Association Fellowship, Kim
Cameron-Dominguez FP ’04 will use her Bardwell Memorial Fellowship to support her graduate
studies in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Cameron-Dominguez will be focusing on Afro-Caribbean cultures.
Jennifer A. Mehaffey FP ’04 will be attending law school this fall with
the help of the Mary E. Woolley Fellowship. Mehaffey plans to use her first
year in law school to explore a variety of fields, including public interest
law and maritime law. She has been accepted to several law schools and is on
the “preferred wait-list” for the College of William and Mary Marshall
Wythe School of Law in Williamsburg, Virginia.
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