Loewenstern Fellows announced

Loewenstern Fellows announced
Fellowships offer international service experience

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

The Community Involvement Center recently announced the inaugural class of Loewenstern Fellows who will spend their summers volunteering abroad in communities throughout Latin America. Established by a gift from alumnus Walter Loewenstern ’58, the fellowships provide stipends for students to volunteer abroad through direct service, mentorship or civic research and design placements.

In this pilot year, 11 students will be performing direct service in Latin America — such as working at a pediatric clinic or domestic violence shelter in Peru — but the program is expected to grow in the next four years to up to 50 total placements per year in Latin America and Asia and feature mentorship or civic research and design placements.

COURTESY PHOTO

The Community Involvement Center recently announced the inaugural class of Loewenstern Fellows who will spend their summers volunteering abroad in communities throughout Latin America.

The fellows are:

Jennifer Zhan, a sophomore at Lovett College, will travel to Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, this summer to work with the Association for Women, Families and the Community of Quepos. The organization’s mission is to foster the development of women, families and the community through the realization of social, cultural, environmental and economic projects and programs. Zhan has proposed a project to advance health, disease prevention and women’s rights among the prostitute population. Her project was inspired by the work of St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities, an organization that she interned with during the summer of her freshman year. Zhan is a biochemistry major and hopes to pursue a career in medicine and public health.

Fiona Adams is a Lovett College sophomore anthropology major who will travel to Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Cuzco, Peru, this summer. Her time in Cochabamba will be spent studying the indigenous language Quechua, which is spoken across the Andes, with the Cornell University Latin American Studies Program. She will then travel to Cuzco as a Loewenstern Fellow to apply her new Quechua skills while working for the Peruvian nongovernmental organization Arariwa through the volunteer organization ProWorld Service Corps. Arariwa’s three sectors of work include microbusiness consulting, adult education and leadership development. Adams plans to work in the leadership development team as a way of enabling communities to develop sustainable incomes and business practices. As an anthropologist, she would like to explore the notion of commerce being a pathway to better health. After graduation, Adams hopes to work for the Peace Corps and eventually become a professional anthropologist, a development expert or an international doctor.

Tiffany Yeh is a junior from Martel College studying cognitive sciences. This summer she will implement a project teaching primary-school children in Haiti about basic hygiene and science (via much motion and little speech). The project builds on a health-science curriculum she developed as part of Rice’s global health technologies program, Beyond Traditional Borders, and what she learned studying medical anthropology in Ecuador last semester. After she completes her fellowship, she will travel to a medical outreach center in Guatemala to take on projects and assess its needs.
 
Steven Ricondo, a junior at Baker College majoring in health science, will spend a month this summer volunteering in a reproductive health program in Quito, Ecuador. The program, offered through Child Family Health International, focuses on promoting women’s health and wellness and will provide Ricondo with the opportunity to see cultural and gender differences in health care. With interests lying predominantly in women’s reproductive health and aspirations of one day becoming an obstetrician-gynecologist, the prospect of interacting with women of a foreign culture from the viewpoint of their own health-care system immediately caught his eye. He hopes his work this summer will further the advancements of global reproductive health, especially in Ecuador.

Mark Yurewicz is currently a junior at Baker College majoring in religious studies and applying to medical schools this summer. He will travel to the Ecuadorian Andes and Amazonian jungle with Child Family Health International this July. After studying Tibetan medicine in the Indian Himalayas during his monthlong independent study in fall 2007, he said he is excited to learn more about traditional indigenous Amazonian medicine and its overlaps with modern allopathic medicine. He said the fellowship is part of his path to becoming a physician who can serve people around the world with many different perspectives on the nature of life, health and healing.

Michael Puente is a sophomore at Hanszen College majoring in biological sciences. He lives in New Orleans but will spend two months this summer volunteering in a pediatric clinic run by a Catholic priest in Cuzco, Peru. Puente will be assisting the medical staff of the facility with patient care and will spend much of his time interacting with the patients and taking care of the basic needs of the students at an associated special-needs school. He recently returned from an Alternative Spring Break trip in the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation of South Dakota, where he mentored the local youth at an after-school program. The experience inspired him to dedicate his summer to helping children in another culture. Puente plans to become a pediatrician and looks forward to the opportunity to improve his Spanish, experience another culture and work with the children of Peru.

Julia Lukomnik is a Baker College sophomore sociology major and global health minor. This summer she will travel to Cuzco, Peru, to help teach battered women how to become financially independent of their abusers. Lukomnik has always been passionate about women’s rights and has worked at Rice’s Women’s Resource Center and implemented a mental health program at a women’s clinic in New York City. She hopes through the Loewenstern Fellowship to gain a true understanding of the people she is helping. Lukomnik said she hopes to one day save the world and truly believes that one person can make a difference.

Anna Roberts is a sophomore majoring in history and the study of women, gender and sexuality.  She will spend her summer in Salvador, Brazil, volunteering at various local organizations to help stop the cycle of poverty. Rice’s Pilot Program for Poverty, Social Justice and Human Capabilities first sparked her interest. Through those classes and others, she felt a call to fight poverty caused by the conditions of illiteracy, drug addiction and violence. She hopes the Loewenstern Fellowship provides her with the opportunity to connect her academic knowledge to real-life experiences. A lifelong service worker and feminist, she looks forward to the opportunity to interact with Brazilian women and understand what they truly need to improve their lives. She plans to continue fighting for social justice and the end of poverty before and after graduation.

Kyle Saari is a first-semester senior environmental Earth science major from Brown College. He will travel to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he will learn about the culture and help solve the problems it faces while also developing his Spanish language ability. Saari plans to study environmental law to become an effective advocate for positive social change. Through the fellowship, Saari hopes to learn more about Mexico so he can be better-suited to work with people across cultures.

Bhavika Kaul, a Brown College senior, and Alfredo Gutierrez, a Wiess College senior, also were awarded Loewenstern Fellowships, but details about their plans were not available at press time.

Applications for the 2009 Loewenstern Fellowships will be available in the fall at the Community Involvement Center or www.rice.edu/service.  

Future fellows will include mentorship placements modeled after a Leadership Rice program in which a student partners with a mentor who is an effective, ethical leader within a service-oriented organization. Through their mentorship, the students will gain leadership skills working with different cultures in public service, advocacy, education, policy or social entrepreneurship.

Students who choose to pursue the civic research and design track of the fellowships will conduct faculty-supervised, community-based research or design projects that will benefit the communities they serve. They will work in collaboration with government entities, nonprofit organizations or nongovernmental organizations.

In addition to encouraging and supporting undergraduate research and service abroad, the Loewenstern Fellowship Program aims to enrich students’ understanding and foster campuswide discussion of complex global issues.