SCHOLARSHIPS
The 2007-2008 Dr. L. Jill Loucks Memorial Scholarships have been awarded to Erin Foster, Christine Kirby, and Kaitlyn Kluge.
OUTSTANDING SENIOR: THE DR. L. JILL LOUCKS MEMORIAL AWARD
PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY AWARD
Matthew Bouchard has shown his dedication to anthropology through his work in social justice with the Farm Labor Organization Committee and the Farmworker Health Program of Watauga Medical Center. A first-hand experience of the unfair labor practices migrant workers are subjected to led to Matt's involvement. This year, he has traveled to a Farm Labor Organizing Committee convention in Toledo, and helped plan and implement a successful Latino Health Fair in Avery County. Matt was the recipient of both the Outstanding Senior and the Practicing Anthropology Awards for 2007-08.
A GRADUATE SPEAKS!
Teresa Campbell is a former student of ours who graduated last December, and was recently accepted into the University of California Santa Cruz’ PhD program to pursue her interest in how power relations among tourists and locals in Mongolia shape local identities. She also won the Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship, which provides a full in-state tuition waver plus a stipend of $21,000 a year for two years, as well as a fellowship covering out-of-state tuition. Here, she shares some personal history as well as advice for applying to graduate school.
Having been raised in a small town in rural northern Wisconsin in a working class family has inevitably shaped my interests in anthropology. Anthropology laid bare for me the power relations and social structures framing my life and the lives of my family, and fueled my desire to return this understanding back to the working class I came from. It was with this in mind that I applied to UC Santa Cruz, knowing I would be free to pursue creative forms of ethnography in a supportive environment.
I certainly never expected to seek a PhD – indeed, in a senior yearbook competition I was voted by my peers most likely to become a maid. Nonetheless, I was eager to escape into the wider world, and so I left for the military at seventeen. During my six years in the Army as a helicopter mechanic, I began taking college courses at night, partly for something to do, and partly, I think, to discover what to do with my life. I knew I wanted to see more of the world (I was stationed in Georgia and Hawaii, but not outside the U.S.), but beyond that all I figured out was that I liked school and wished to continue. So as my enlistment was coming to an end, I applied to Appalachian, and was accepted. I switched majors a couple times before chance landed me in Introduction to Cultural Anthropology with Dr. Mines. I was absolutely hooked, and have been ever since. I ended up taking three more courses with Dr. Mines, and I owe her greatly for her encouragement, advice, and honest feedback. Another formative course was Dr. Reck’s Ethnographic Writing and Video, in which students were given a few guidelines for their projects, but encouraged to push the boundaries and be creative. It was this course that opened my eyes to the possibility of directly engaging the public with anthropology.
My overall experience as a major in the department was wonderful, with each professor contributing a new angle of understanding to my picture of the world. The closeness of the relations both among professors, and between professors and students made such a difference for me. My best advice for anyone considering applying to graduate school would be to take advantage of this early on by developing relationships with one or two professors who are supportive of and interested in your ideas, even if your ideas seem to you to be unrefined and changing. Your enthusiasm will be contagious! Beyond that, get involved in what you like – attend a field school, set up your own international summer program for credit (I did this by taking courses at a university in Mongolia), go to a conference, etc. This will tell a graduate panel that you’re serious about anthropology. But most of all, enjoy anthropology, and don’t forget why you fell in love with it in the first place.
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