Social Sciences Archives - ��vlog

Strange in the Familiar: Exploring humanity through anthropology and science fiction

Communications — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 21:21:08 +0000

For Kailey Rocker, former visiting assistant professor of anthropology, science fiction was one of the most natural ways to explore anthropological concepts.��

For two of her three years at ��vlog, she taught the course Anthropology and Sci-Fi—under ANTH 300: Topics in Anthropology—where students explored humanity through an unfamiliar lens: the connection between science fiction and anthropology.

“We have an adage in anthropology: ‘to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange,'” said Rocker. “There are a lot of things that we consider normal or that we take for granted that are familiar to us. Students learn to reexamine what they consider familiar and to open themselves up to the diversity of perspectives that exist. Science fiction does the same thing.”

Kailey Rocker

We have an adage in anthropology: ‘to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange.’ Students learn to reexamine what they consider familiar and to open themselves up to the diversity of perspectives that exist. Science fiction does the same thing.
– Kailey Rocker

Mark Jenike, associate professor of anthropology and chair of the department, said elective courses like Anthropology and Sci-Fi provide an opportunity for students to dive deeper into specific aspects of humanity and understand them in new ways.

“Anthropology is the only discipline at Lawrence that seeks to understand humans as a total species, from our origins to the present, in all of our global diversity,” said Jenike. “Dr. Rocker’s Anthropology and Sci-Fi course is the kind of creative application of an anthropological approach to understanding humanity that our topics courses are particularly well-suited for.”��

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Ethnography & Science Fiction

While they differ in content, writing style, and audience, both anthropological writing and science fiction share a commonality: they are forms of world-building. The course combined creative writing with ethnographic writing through readings, writing, and a world-building project.

Ethnography is a research methodology that cultural anthropologists use. It is a type of immersive fieldwork where anthropologists live with, work with, and interview the people they are studying. It also refers to the written stories anthropologists produce from their fieldwork.

“We collaborate with communities to share their story and their experience of the world around them,” Rocker said. “There is a creative component, though. My field notes are often written down as a story: what I encountered, who I learned from, and some quotes they shared with me. In ethnographic writing, you are trying to the best of your ability to represent the words and the worlds of the people that you work with as truthfully as you can.”

This is where the two genres differ. While ethnographers are responsible for truthfully and honestly representing the people they study, science fiction writers have more creative freedom. This freedom makes science fiction a great avenue for exploring anthropological ideas without having the same constraints.

World-Building and the Power of Sci-Fi��

For their world-building project, students worked in small groups to construct a world where specific technology, technological input, or environmental change had occurred. From there, they imagined the logic and cultural systems of that world, exploring beyond the bounds of their own reality.

“They were each responsible for developing some aspect through story and through it an anthropological analysis,” said Rocker. “I asked them to think not only about technology or material but to think more about the human experience. How would this impact what a family structure looks like? How might it influence relationship building or language development?”

As part of this project, students also interviewed each other in a ‘cultural exchange’ to present an analysis of what a long-term cultural encounter between two very different groups would look like.

From this project, the idea of a sci-fi zine was born.

“One student just made a casual remark that they really enjoyed reading the other groups’ material,” Rocker said. “That it was so neat to dive into a different world that wasn’t their own and to see the creativity, imagination, and exploration. I was like, ‘Would anyone be comfortable sharing their stories outside the classroom?’”

The answer was yes. Nine students from the winter 2025 course worked with Rocker through the spring to edit and compile their stories into a science fiction zine. A limited number of copies were also printed by Allegra Appleton.

In the zine, the students used the genre of science fiction to build worlds with their own cultural logics and contemplate anthropological questions.

“We are fortunate to have An Anthropology Anthology of Other Worlds as a lasting reminder of the achievements of Dr. Rocker and her students in the anthropological study of self and other, of the familiar and strange,” Jenike said.��

Exploring Humanity Through Fiction��

Junior Percy Schneider, an anthropology major from Milwaukee, WI, always had an interest in humans and in fiction. They found their passion for anthropology after taking Rocker’s introductory cultural anthropology course.

“I love humans; I love everything we create,” Schneider said. “I took intro to cultural anthropology with Kailey Rocker, and something just kind of clicked: ‘This is my field. This is where I’m meant to be.’”

Schneider studied under Rocker again in the science fiction course. They enjoyed the readings and the challenge of studying humanity through science fiction.

“I think science fiction is a great genre because it’s looking at humanity looking towards the future,” Schneider said. “There are stories where it gets really dystopian, but other times, there are ones that just fill us with this blinding hope.”

Percy Schneider

For their literary exercise, Schneider collaborated with, among others, junior Iris Shykula, a junior creative writing and Russian studies major from Longmont, CO, to create a shared universe for their stories. The effort was entirely collaborative, as they had to decide how their stories fit together, what the timeline was, and the rules of how their world functioned.

Schneider’s story follows a 16-year-old on her ‘descent,’ a rite of passage for people in their culture who are about to start a new job at the bottom of the ocean. The story also explores the theme of kinship in a world without traditional families.

“I was really trying to focus on finding family in a world where you don’t begin with one, because in the world we created, there are no babies or children,” Schneider said. “I focused on that idea of how someone looking like you could be comforting, even if you don’t know them at all. I wanted it to be like coming to a home that you never knew you had.”

The students were also asked to write an anthropological analysis of their own works of fiction. Schneider made the decision to include their analysis in the zine. When analyzing your own work, they said they felt like a professional anthropologist.

“I yielded more out of analyzing the story than writing the story,” Schneider said. “I started looking back at it, and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I see how this works. I see how this represents some anthropological concept.’”

In addition to their stories, students were tasked with imagining an everyday cultural object from their worlds. They designed and 3D printed these objects with the help of the ��vlog Makerspace. Pictures of the objects were printed in the zine, and the physical items were used in a cultural encounter workshop. Students were challenged to interpret the objects produced by other groups like archaeologists working within a limited context.

Angela Vanden Elzen, associate professor and reference and learning technologies librarian, said this is one of the many examples of Lawrentians utilizing the Makerspace to get more out of their coursework and their Lawrence experience.

“Our makerspace has given faculty, students, and staff the opportunity to bring a wide range of making technologies into coursework, laboratories, performance spaces, field work, as a creative outlet, and so much more,” Vanden Elzen said. “These kinds of projects help students to see that getting started with 3D design and 3D printing is not as intimidating as they may think. The technology has come so far that it is easier than ever to learn how to use these technologies.”

According to Rocker, the idea was to make students consider how everyday objects can take on new meanings when viewed in a different light. One group, inspired by time travel and historical drama, created a teleportation device within a pocket watch. The device caused severe memory loss when used, which led to a deeper analysis of how this would impact kinship practices, communication, and human agency.��

A microscopic heart implant

The “Обласк/Oblask” biomechanical device

A pocketwatch and teleportation device

“The Tether,” a communication implant

A Collaborative Effort��

While Rocker had initially planned for the zine to be a digital-only project, she was encouraged to get it printed.

“I’m very excited with what we were able to achieve. It surpassed my wildest imaginations,” Rocker said.

Physical copies of the zine were disseminated to different departments at ��vlog and are available to check out at the Seeley G. Mudd Library.

Rocker hopes that readers enjoy the students’ creativity and get to experience what Lawrence professors get to see every day.

“I’m blown away by the creativity and passion, and I hope readers will think about the ways it overlaps with or is very distinct from their own everyday lives and experiences,” Rocker said. “So much collaboration was involved in the creation of this little zine. I’m incredibly proud of the students who took the class and also indulged me in taking on this project.”��

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Student research in humanities, social sciences shines in Harrison Symposium

Communications — Wed, 18 May 2022 18:51:25 +0000

The 25th Annual Richard A. Harrison Symposium was held on Saturday to highlight the research of 28 ��vlog students in the humanities and social sciences. Each of the presenters were nominated by a faculty member who felt their work represented the best undergraduate research of the year.

Named in honor of former Dean of the Faculty Richard A. Harrison, the annual symposium is dedicated solely to research in the humanities and social sciences—a key part of the liberal arts.

According to Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Connie Kassor, who organized this year’s symposium, it can be difficult to showcase research from softer academic fields, since this type of research rarely lends itself to poster presentations. Junior Jonathan Hogan, who presented on the East German film, “Dove on the Roof,” appreciates the platform the Harrison Symposium provides for humanities students to demonstrate the relevance of their work.

“It seems obscure—like, East German film, who cares, right?—but when you really start getting into it and how structures of oppression play out, it’s really nice to have the opportunity to talk about this in a broader setting where it can be appreciated as it deserves to be,” Hogan said.

Faculty members Peter Blitstein and Connie Kassor speak to Harrison Symposium participants in the Youngchild atrium before presentations begin in Main Hall. (Photo by Liz Boutelle)��

Although the student presenters are selected by faculty members, the event is open to the public, thus providing students with the rare opportunity to be both the educator and the educated, often at the same time. In addition to revisiting and highlighting their own work and interests, students can sit in on other presentations to learn about a completely new topic.

“We’ve all been doing a lot of really exceptional projects and essays throughout the school year, so it’s important to give people recognition and credit where credit is due, and also for the campus community to learn about other disciplines they’re not a part of,” said junior Kim Du, who, after watching a series of other student presentations, presented on the commodification of African Americans in print. “That was really interesting, to see what our fellow Lawrentians are doing.”

In addition to learning about research in other fields, the presentation process itself also serves as a unique learning experience. As the presenters go through the process of revising, editing, and compiling their research into something that can be presented in 20 minutes, they hone existing skills and develop new ones.

For senior Jessica Toncler, who was one of the first presenters of the day with her government capstone research on “Compulsory Freedom: The Effectiveness of the U.S. Methods of Foreign-Imposed Regime Change,” the Harrison Symposium was a lesson in packaging extensive research to make it digestible to a person who isn’t already in her field. She feels that the ability to present the key points to an audience outside of academia is critical to effective research.

Further, the Harrison Symposium is where the research process comes full circle: students learn how an idea becomes a research question, how a research question becomes a paper, and how a paper becomes a presentation—which could potentially be used as their careers unfold.

Take junior Tee Karki, for example. She came into her capstone class knowing that she wanted to research restorative justice, a topic that she was already passionate about. Now, after presenting at the Harrison Symposium, she’s inspired to use her research to facilitate change.

“When I was being posed questions about what I want to do further, I had this moment when I realized that something that I want to do in the future is to propose a policy for restorative justice in the U.S.,” Karki said. “…Maybe it won’t go anywhere, but to have that fully researched, someone could pick it up in the next 100 years. I might not be there, but my research will be.”

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Lawrence students, alums provide outreach on KidsGive trip to Sierra Leone

Communications — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 14:17:30 +0000

Lawrence junior AJ Ulwelling spent his spring break in a classroom—but not the kind you’re thinking of.

Over the course of two days, he worked with a group of KidsGive volunteers to facilitate eye tests for 150 fifth- and sixth-graders at Conforti School, a primary school on the edge of Freetown, Sierra Leone. As the students filtered in and out of the classroom, they were tested by a Freetown-based eye doctor, tried on a series of frame options donated by Cherry Optical Lab in Green Bay, and interacted with Lawrence students who helped ensure the day went smoothly as they kept track of the students in line, explained the eye test, and handed out stickers.

The students who needed glasses selected the frames they wanted, and their prescription was sent back to the U.S. Within the next few months, they’ll be getting their new eyeglasses, free of charge.

This initiative was multinational, involving stakeholders and contributors on opposite sides of the ocean. But it all began in Youngchild 121, with a project in professor of government Claudena Skran’s Social Entrepreneurship class.

Government professor Claudena Skran and Lawrence alumnus Jonathan Rubin talk with Conforti School headmaster Francis Mason during the EyeGive clinic.��

“It started out as an idea in a class and one that we thought would never really happen, and we turned it into this project that was able to test a bunch of kids that maybe wouldn’t have had access to an eye doctor,” Ulwelling said.

There are only a handful of optometrists in the country,��and one of them, Augustine McCauley,��joined the Lawrence group at Conforti School, he said.

History of support

EyeGive is just one of the many projects KidsGive has sponsored over the last decade and a half, all led by Lawrence students and alumni.

Although KidsGive started as a student club in 2009, it has grown into a nonprofit program run by current Lawrence students and an alumni board of directors. In the early 2010s, KidsGive was absorbed into Lawrence’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Program as a practicum option, connecting the organization to Lawrence’s academic offerings. But through all the changes, it has remained true to its original mission: supporting education in Sierra Leone and promoting education in the U.S. about African and Sierra Leonean life and culture.

Lawrence junior Marifé Entenza-Sierra talks with students at the FAWE Primary School.��

KidsGive returned to Sierra Leone over spring break for the first time since the pandemic began. The group was led by Skran, the��Edwin & Ruth West Professor of Economics and Social Science and professor of government who founded and is��faculty advisor of KidsGive. It included eight current Lawrence students—including yours truly. Four alums, including Patrick Adu, a native of Sierra Leone, met up with the group to share in parts of the experience.

This year’s trip was centered around two key KidsGive projects, as well as three individual student research projects. The first half of the 10-day trip was dedicated to the aforementioned EyeGive project at Conforti School. In the latter half of the week, the group drove more than five hours from Freetown to rural Mattru Jong to contribute to the building of an all-girls junior secondary school at FAWE (Forum for African Women Educationalists) School, which has been a goal of the school’s founders since the early 2000s. Now, after 15 years in existence, KidsGive finally has the resources to help fund and coordinate the project, and they are hoping for a grand opening of the new school by September.

That said, each KidsGive trip looks a bit different. The itinerary depends on what KidsGive’s partner schools need and what the student volunteers can bring to the table. Previous projects have included sports days in which KidsGive provides equipment and volunteers coordinate sporting events, a recycled-used computer project at Njala University, and the building of a well at Conforti School—the latter of which was born from student research projects on pollution and water quality.

“Our projects really depend on the school, the needs that the school has and our discussions with the school about how we can best support them in those needs,” Skran said.

As for the students on the trip—all of whom had their travel, lodging, and food fully funded by either the Class of ’68 Grant, the Chandler Senior Experience Grant, the Povolny Fund or the Humanitarian Grant—it’s all about experiential learning.

“I really believe in the experiential learning model, which transports you from a traditional classroom to a so-called ‘real-world’ setting,” Skran said. “It’s not that a normal classroom and library are not important, but it’s important to go beyond that and see what problems are out there, how they’re configured, and what are things you haven’t thought about before.”

This experiential learning takes a variety of forms. First and foremost, students get the opportunity to give back in meaningful ways. According to KidsGive Director of Finance Wesley Varughese ’16, one of the KidsGive alumni who volunteered with the projects in Sierra Leone, the experience of traveling with KidsGive as a Lawrence student continues to impact him today. Moments that seemed small at the time have shaped his current outlook on volunteering and making an impact globally—a feeling that is shared by the ever-expanding alumni network.

“This is an organization where if you want to see the impact and feel the impact, you’re asked to fly to Freetown, to be a part of it, to be involved in the day-to-day,” Varughese said. “To actually watch the impact I see in the kids’ lives and even the community’s lives, that’s enough for me to say that I don’t ever see KidsGive not being part of my daily life. I would like to be a part of it for the rest of my life or as long as I can.”

Discover Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Lawrence

From start-ups to social entrepreneurship, exciting opportunities await.��

Gaining valuable experience

Likewise, as the alumni network expands and the organization becomes increasingly professionalized, students can model the operations of a real nongovernmental organization and gain professional experience.

Junior��Marifé��Entenza-Sierra was part of the team that developed EyeGive (along with Ulwelling and junior Sid Short), and she spent last summer working with KidsGive: writing newsletters, documenting thank-you letters for donors, and participating in finance and planning meetings. Through this experience, she feels she’s getting a taste of the post-graduate career world.

“Being a member of KidsGive basically made me an employee of a larger professional group,” Entenza-Sierra said. “I’ve spoken to so many experts within the field, and I feel like I’ve made so many networking connections because of KidsGive in the first place, whereas my friends don’t necessarily have the opportunity to do that unless they go out of their way.”

Lawrence students AJ Ulwelling and Sid Short sit with a student at Conforti School as she has her eyes tested.��

While supporting education in Sierra Leone and developing real-world skills are central to KidsGive’s work, there is still the second prong to their mission: increasing education and awareness of Sierra Leonean culture in the U.S. The students on the trips play a critical role in achieving this goal.

Outside of the service projects, students spend their time immersed in Sierra Leonean culture through visits to local markets, conversations with locals, and attendance at key cultural events. By exploring the country and listening to the people who live there, Lawrentians learn about life in Sierra Leone, which they can utilize to fight misconceptions when they return home.

“I’ve definitely gained a different cultural perspective and understanding of Sierra Leone that I didn’t have before,” Ulwelling said. “I don’t know how I perceived African countries before this trip, and so it’s been a great way to see what’s called the ‘developing world’ but also to see that it’s so far off from the ideas many Americans have about Africa.”

As for KidsGive’s impact on its partner schools—well, most of the credit goes to the dedicated Sierra Leonean leaders and teachers on the ground. But since KidsGive has started its work, the schools have all grown in size, seen improvements in their facilities, and developed a stronger educational mission. Skran believes that the resources KidsGive has been able to provide have at least partially contributed to these successes.

As such, KidsGive will continue to do this work, to sponsor projects, and to bring Lawrence students to Sierra Leone. Whether it’s building a new school or just playing learning games with the kids, KidsGive always revolves around one core belief: education is power.

“[The FAWE students and I] started spelling different fruits, different objects, different places, and they all knew exactly how to spell things. Then we started to do addition and subtraction, and they all knew everything,” Entenza-Sierra said of her time in the classroom at FAWE. “And it was like, this is truly what an education does. It makes people not just learn, but also learn together and have fun with it, because they were experiencing so much fun with me, and I was having so much fun literally just spelling out words that I wanted to stay there for the rest of the day.”

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From podcast to escape rooms, final exams at Lawrence can get creative

Communications — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 19:22:59 +0000

Professors at Lawrence are continuously tapping into new and creative ways to assess how well students comprehend the information taught in their classrooms.

We caught up with two classes at the end of spring term where new approaches were being used, setting aside the traditional final exam or research paper — Lavanya Murali’s Anthropology 531 Semiotics course, where students were asked to build escape rooms, and Brigid Vance’s History 101 course, where students created a Lawrence history-focused podcast.

Sharing the history

History 101 is an introductory course, meaning��there is��a different professor teaching the course each year. When it was Vance’s��turn to teach the course, she decided to incorporate a more interactive element for both her and her students to engage with. Rather than��assigning��a��research paper, which��is typically the final assessment��for the course, Vance assigned her students to work together to create a podcast.��

“You hone the same kinds of skills, you still write the script, you still do the research, but the tone is a little different” Vance said.��

Throughout the term, students learned how to conduct research and explored the techniques historians use to do their work. With that knowledge in place, the students began doing research on Lawrentians from the past.

“I met with the university archivist and asked if this was a possibility, and she was totally on board,” Vance said. “We worked together a few months in advance of the class, figuring out what would be possible for students in the class to complete given the 10-week term.”

Using a list of noteworthy Lawrentians compiled by the archivist, techniques on research they learned in class, and a podcast they listened to in class as a reference, the students set out to create their own podcast on notable Lawrentians through the years.

“I care a lot about the way the class feels,” Vance said. “And that’s not something I think you can control, but I think you can try to help create a space where people can connect with one another.”��

Vance called her new approach to assessment “very successful” — not only through the positive reaction from her students to the more engaging assignment, but also to creating something that could then be shared.��They placed posters in the Mudd Library near the end of spring term to direct people to the podcast.

“The posters with the QR codes that linked to the podcast were up through reunion weekend (in mid-June),” Vance said. “So, all the alums coming in could learn something about the history of this place, too.”��

Vance has gone the more traditional route for assessing her students in the past, but she has found that when taking a more creative approach,��learning is a lot more enjoyable for both her and her students.��

“At least for me, I get very excited when doing something creative and collaborative,” Vance said. “So that’s something that I feel is really authentic and honest, and if I am honest with myself, it allows for others to be honest with themselves. Ultimately, I think it makes for a better learning environment.”

Vance would like to thank the following people who helped make the project possible: David Berk, Gretchen Revie, Erin Dix,��Debra Walker, her��History Department colleagues, and all of her��Spring 2019 History 101 students.

Reading the signs

In��Murali’s��anthropology course, students learned about the different ways in which signs can be expressed, shown throughout the world, and how to make meaning of them.��

“A sign can be anything from a street sign to the clothes someone wears,” said Joseph Wetzel ’20, a student who took Murali’s course. “So,��anything that signifies something else is a sign.”��

Throughout the spring term, the class built on this idea of signs being more than we typically think of.��

“A��lot��of understanding of how information is translated through signs is thinking about shared cultural knowledge,”��Wetzel said.��

All of��the work they did throughout the term led to students breaking into groups and creating their own escape rooms in various places around campus.��

“The students spent all term drawing on the semiotic theory they were learning in class to understand how clues work as signs, and how escape rooms are semiotic spaces,” Murali said.��“They then applied this knowledge to creating their own escape rooms.”��

During class, they looked at different escape rooms��online to familiarize themselves with them. At the end of the course, they used all the��knowledge��they gained about signs having deeper meanings based on cultural knowledge to create the escape rooms, and opened them to others on campus to solve.��

“There are clues that refer to different buildings on campus, and we have clues (that refer to) Lawrentians,” Wetzel said.��

It was a fun way to also explore Lawrence culture.��

“Escape Room: Library” was created by a group of students in Lavanya Murali’s Anthropology 531 Semiotics course. “I think it went well,” Murali said of the hands-on approach.

One of the escape rooms, created by Amy Courter ’21,��Hayoung��Seo ’19, and Wetzel and titled��Escape Room: Library, was based on a concept that students could identify with. “It’s based on a student waking up from her dream, because they fell asleep while studying for��finals,”��Seo said.

Murali has been incorporating innovative learning methods into her classroom��and��has seen it have a positive impact on the way her students��react to learning.��

“I have increasingly been focusing on engaged, hands-on assignments as a way to help students understand and apply what they learn in class, and this assignment follows that pedagogic strategy,” Murali said. “I think it went well, and I’m very proud of my students.”��

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Lawrence students can access funds to pursue passion projects, engaged learning

Communications — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:47:20 +0000

��vlog students need not look far to find funding to help them pursue their passions or other engaged learning opportunities. In most cases, it requires only a plan of action and a few minutes to fill out an application.

From��summer internships��to summer research to study abroad, the funding��for experiential learning, mostly supported by alumni and other donors, is available from the time students come in as first-years until the time they walk across the stage at Commencement. It might provide a stipend for a coveted internship with a nonprofit; it might cover the travel costs for music students who qualify for a national competition; it might help bridge the expenses of field research that’s part of a Chandler Senior Experience project; it might help launch a community outreach initiative; or it might help lessen the financial burden that comes with studying in a foreign land.

The Career Center alone disbursed��nearly $250,000��last year to students in support of��.

“These funds can help open doors to students as they seek out internships, pursue mentored research experiences, and engage in other forms of career development,” said Jacklyn John Fischer, interim dean of the Career Center and Center for Community Engagement and Social Change. “And��these funds��also offer the gift of time—time to focus on projects and experiences that align with their own interests and passions.”

Here’s a handy guide to some of the available funds at Lawrence:

Experiential Learning Funds

Funds available:��Can range from $100 to $5,000 depending on scope of the project.

Need to know:��These monies are available to offset costs of summer internships, volunteer work,��mentored��research projects,��and other forms of career development. Much of the funding is intended to help students take��on work that will expand their classroom learning and build skills in an area of career interest—covering expenses like travel, housing, research materials, and other living expenses. Students can, for example, use the funding to take an otherwise unpaid internship with a nonprofit that’s doing important community work, something that played out last summer when��, linking a dozen student interns with multiple nonprofits in Appleton and��the Milwaukee metro area.

Where to find information:��.

Words of wisdom:��“Interested in pursuing funding for experiential learning but not sure where to start? Come visit the Career Center. Our advising team is eager to help you find an opportunity that excites you,”��Fischer said.

Chandler Senior Experience

Funds available:��Up to $3,000.

Need to know:��Every Lawrence student needs to plan, develop, and execute a Chandler Senior Experience to graduate, all under the guidance of a faculty adviser. The costs can sometimes add up depending on the scope of the project. Chandler Senior Experience funds make it possible for Lawrence students to pursue ambitious projects. Students can apply for up to $3,000 in supportive funds. The projects are the culminations of students’ courses of study—representing independent, original work—and often are stepping stones to the next chapter in their lives.

Where to find information:��

Words of wisdom:��“Music performance majors have commissioned new works for their senior recitals, science majors have engaged in cutting-edge research in the laboratory, and students in the humanities and social sciences have been able—pre-Covid—to travel for field research and work in archives and libraries around the world,” said Peter Blitstein, associate dean of the faculty. “Chandler funds have been used by film studies students to cover the expenses of renting equipment and studio art majors for materials and supplies for their works contributing to the senior show.”

Summer research

Funds available:��Up to $4,160 + free summer housing on campus.

Need to know:��Every summer, about 100 Lawrence students are paid to engage in collaborative research and other creative activity with faculty across the university.��In addition to a full-time stipend for 10 weeks of work, students are offered free housing on campus.��It started as an initiative primarily for the natural sciences, but in recent years the ��vlog Research Fellows (LURF) program has grown to include faculty in the Conservatory, the arts, humanities, and social sciences.��The work gives students the chance to develop skills in research, critical thinking, and organizing.

Where to find information:��. And��.

Words of wisdom:��“For many of the students, summer research represents critical experience to prepare them for postgraduate education,” Blitstein said.��“Donor funds, grants, and the operating budget work together to support the most characteristic of Lawrence’s traits—close collaboration that benefits students and faculty alike.”

Community service, social change

Funds available:��Up to $5,000.

Need to know:��The Center for Community Engagement and Social Change (CCE) stewards the Summer Volunteer Opportunity Grant (SVOG) and works closely with LUCC’s Committee on Community Service and Engagement (CCSE) to administer the Humanitarian Projects Grant. Both give students a financial assist for projects that do good in the world.

The SVOG was established in 1991 to support students interested in planning and implementing service projects. Applicants are expected to design a service project or to secure acceptance in an existing service program.

The Humanitarian Projects Grant is another option. It provides funding for students performing service on campus, in the Fox Cities or in the world at large. The grant can be used to fund domestic and international service experiences, or to support students or student organizations interested in hosting a philanthropic fundraising event.

Where to find information:��For the SVOG,��. And��

Words of wisdom:��“It’s important that we recognize the socioeconomic privilege embedded in historical models of service and experiential learning,” said Garrett Singer, director of the CCE. “Travel and materials costs, living expenses, and lost summer wages can create significant barriers for students who are interested in engaging in service. These funds allow students to access opportunities for personal and professional development that will enrich their Lawrence experience.”

Study abroad

Funds available:��Scholarships typically range from $1,000 to $2,000; also, financial aid can be used while studying abroad.

Need to know:��Lawrence students looking to study abroad can apply for Off-Campus Programs scholarships that can help offset costs related to passports, flights, or daily living expenses. The need-based scholarships are funded by donors who want to support study abroad opportunities for all students. Many of those donors are alumni who studied abroad themselves. Lawrence also adjusted its financial aid rules in 2019 to��.

Where to find information:��.

Words of wisdom:��“Many of our students have expressed gratitude that without these donor scholarships they would not have been able to consider options that otherwise would have been out of reach—like pursuing an international internship, being the first in their family to study abroad, or to explore a country they had only dreamed of visiting,” said Lezlie Weber, director of Off-Campus Programs.

Conservatory of Music

Funds available:��Chandler Senior Experience up to $3,000; Sturm and Jordheim typically range from $2,000 to $4,000; Con Squared up to $5,000.

Need to know:��A growing number of Conservatory students have been using Chandler Senior Experience funding to cover special costs tied to their senior recitals. In the past couple of years, for example,��and��both embarked on elaborate video projects for their senior recitals, tapping into available funds along the way. They aren’t alone.

“I’ve seen students commission new pieces—it’s fun for them to premiere a work, but it’s also important DEI work because they’re commissioning from living composers who are BIPOC or women, so they’re expanding the repertoire of their instrument in meaningful ways,” said Rosie Cannizzo, director of Conservatory operations.

The Conservatory also has other available funds, including the Fred Sturm Inspiration Fund and the Jordheim Fund, meant to assist music students in pursuing participation in festivals or summer programs.

Con Squared funds, meanwhile, provide stipends for students doing internships with Carnegie Hall, New York Jazz Academy, or Deep Listening Institute.��

Where to find information:��Details are available��;��; for the��; and��.

Words of wisdom:��“Student-initiated experiential learning opportunities can be life-changing for our Conservatory students,” said Brian Pertl, dean of the Conservatory. “With each passing year, there are more and more endowed funds available to support our students’ dream projects.��With these funds, students have commissioned and premiered dozens of new musical works; undertaken internships at arts organizations across the country, traveled to Europe, Africa, and South America to explore a wide variety of music traditions; designed and implemented community outreach projects; and have written, recorded, and produced their own albums or video projects.��These funds help turn dreams into reality. It is a beautiful thing to see.”

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2 Minutes With … Tee Karki: Compiling, sharing resources to assist South Asia

Communications — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 02:32:12 +0000

2 Minutes With … is a series of short features to introduce us to the passions and interests of Lawrence students on and off campus. Find more 2 Minutes With … features��.

Tee Karki ‘23, a government major from Nepal, has been raising awareness for the ongoing COVID-19 crisis in South Asia. That’s included the compiling of an extensive list of resources for people who want to help.

South Asia has seen a surge in COVID -19 cases, with infection rates spiking and the death toll climbing. The outbreak in Nepal hit home for Karki as she spoke to her parents about the vaccinations here in Appleton.

“I mentioned to them that I got my second vaccine and they mentioned that they still hadn’t gotten theirs and I thought that was really concerning,” Karki said.

That was a light-bulb moment for her as she came to understand more about the disparities between her situation in the U.S. and that of her family in Nepal.

Wanting to help the people from her home and other countries in South Asia, Karki dived in this spring. She started by compiling a resource guide, highlighting organizations that are trying to help with everything from medical supplies like oxygen and ventilators to food and other necessities in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh.

It eventually grew into an extensive resource document that she has been sharing on social media.��.

“I wanted to create a resource document by different organizations and where they’re rooted,” Karki said. “So, you can track them based on where they are locally or not locally. And that’s just kind of how I got started, and then I just kept going.”

Facing challenges

Karki’s efforts were not without struggles. She said it was difficult to talk to people about the severity of the situation in South Asia when people here were just starting to overcome their pandemic anxiety. It was also challenging mentally for Karki. She described how she carried a lot of guilt for being able to walk around vaccinated with her friends and then sitting down to write about the dire situation back home.

It also was hard work. Karki had to read through and winnow a lot of information on the organizations she included on her resources list.

“That was my biggest challenge—more than getting it out there—it was going through the information by myself,” she said.

Karki did have experience working in Lawrence’s Title IX office to lean on.

“Working with Title IX is very sensitive; I have to be able to do a lot of research and then condense and make it easy to follow, and I think it’s exactly what I needed to do with the resource document,” she said.

Goals for the future

Karki plans to grow her network of resources and include more countries that have been heavily impacted. She’s working to add Myanmar and the Philippines.

She doesn’t plan to stop there, however. Karki wants to return home to create a video series to highlight the types of loss that people are facing and how they can better manage and cope with that loss.

After college, Karki aims to continue her advocacy work.

“The end goal would be to be an international lawyer and fight against the refugee crisis and genocides and really just commit to supporting people and countries who need to be represented equally with major superpowers,” she said.

Tee Karki

Class Year: 2023

Major: Government

Hometown: Kathmandu, Nepal

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On Main Hall Green With … Jason Brozek: Global perspective, local impact

Communications — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 01:36:51 +0000

About the series: On Main Hall Green With … is an opportunity to connect with faculty on things in and out of the classroom. We’re featuring a different Lawrence faculty member each time — same questions, different answers.

—

Jason Brozek is seemingly everywhere on the ��vlog campus.

The Stephen Edward Scarff Professor of International Affairs and associate professor of government is a highly respected professor in Government as well as the interdisciplinary departments of Global Studies and Environmental Studies. He chairs the latter, which launched an Environmental Science major earlier this year. And he’s playing a lead role in developing a soon-to-be-announced International Relations major.

Brozek serves as a special assistant to the president and was recently named one of the co-leads for a campus-wide guiding coalition charged with visioning Lawrence’s future.

He recently helped launch and lead the Social & Environmental Justice Cohort summer internship program, which debuted this summer in collaboration with a bevy of nonprofit organizations in the Milwaukee metro area.

Off campus, Brozek has been an advocate in the Fox Valley for environmental justice and bicycle-related safety and growth, serving on the Outagamie County Greenway Implementation Committee and Appleton Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee. He also is a member of the Appleton Library Board.

In his spare time, he runs ultramarathons.

Brozek joined the Lawrence faculty in 2008, specializing in international security, global climate politics, water conflict, and international law. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Wayne State College and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

We caught up with Brozek to talk about interests in and out of the classroom.

In the classroom��

Inside info:��What’s one thing you want every student coming into your classes to know about you?

This is my 13th��year at LU and my 20th��year teaching college students, and I love it—but I still get nervous before every single class. Some of that is probably lingering imposter syndrome—it’s only a matter of time before everyone realizes I’m a fraud!—but I think it’s also because I genuinely, deeply care about what my students get out of our classes together.

Getting energized:��What work have you done or will you be doing at Lawrence that gets you the most excited?

Right now, at this very moment, I’m just jazzed to be back in the classroom again after four terms of teaching with Zoom. But bigger picture, I’ve started working with a group of folks from every slice of the Lawrence community on a project about envisioning LU’s future. We’re just getting started, but after 18-plus months of pandemic, I think there’s a lot of people who are ready to think big about charting a course for the future. What do we want Lawrence to be, what can we achieve together, and how do we get from here to there?

Going places:��Is there an example of somewhere your career has taken you (either a physical space or something more intellectual, emotional or spiritual) that took you by surprise?

It still feels surreal sometimes that I’ve had the chance to take dozens and dozens of students to China over the last 10 years. I was a first-generation college student who grew up on a family farm in Nebraska, and studying abroad was never an option for me. No one encouraged me to think about it, and even if they had, the price tag would have made it a non-starter. Eighteen-year-old me would be gobsmacked. I’m hoping we can nail down the funding to get back to international study trips the moment it’s safe again.��

Out of the classroom��

This or that:��If you weren’t teaching for a living, what would you be doing?��

Ha!��I honestly don’t know. Maybe something in city planning? That seems like a pretty big leap from international politics, but there’s something really tangible and powerful about libraries, parks, and bike paths. Fortunately, Appleton is a place where I can dip my toes in that a bit; so I’m not a city planner, but you can definitely find me at Council meetings arguing about stuff like giving away public space to parking.

Right at home:��Whether for work, relaxation or reflection, what’s your favorite spot on campus?

Maybe it’s a cliched, too-easy answer, but I honestly love walking by the river. LU had its back turned to the water for a long, long time and we’ve only started embracing the Fox River in the last 10 to 15 years. It’s such a gem, and I hope we keep pivoting our physical campus toward the water as we build and expand.

One book, one recording, one film:��Name one of each that speaks to your soul? Or you would recommend to a friend? Or both?

Sci-fi and pop culture tell stories about politics that no other medium can, and I’m a huge proponent of taking them seriously. For example, Octavia Butler’s reflection on climate change and capitalism in the dystopian sci-fi book��Parable of the Sower��is something everybody should read. And I don’t know of anything as high profile as��Falcon and the Winter Soldier��that’s tackling the intersection of race and patriotism/nationalism. Doing it through the lens of Marvel superheroes means there’s a lot of new folks wrestling with the question of what it means for a Black man, Sam Wilson, to carry the shield of Captain America. Sure, it’s a Disney+ show with a tie-in action figure line, but it’s also like a contemporary version of Frederick Douglass’s “What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?” I’m also a podcast dork, and I can’t recommend the series��This Land��highly enough. It’s by Rebecca Nagle, a member of Cherokee Nation, and the series is about constitutional law, Native America rights, and tribal policies in the U.S.

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Use of VR tech now reality in classrooms; FaCE grant to ramp up pace

Communications — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 19:26:00 +0000

Senior Experience in Virtual Reality

“One of the reasons I did that project was not only to explore my interest in it but also to give Lawrence the chance to pioneer in an art medium and form that not many schools are doing yet.”

Christopher Gore-Gammon ’17, on creating with virtual reality

— — —

When students in Lavanya Murali’s Anthropology of South Asia class explored a Bangladesh refugee camp via a documentary, they did much more than just watch the narrated video.

Without leaving campus, the ��vlog students walked the paths of the camp housing Rohingya Muslims who had fled violence in Myanmar.

Virtual Reality (VR) technology allowed the students to take the walking tour, with a 360-degree view. Not only could they walk with and listen to the “I Am Rohingya” tour guide discuss the camp, they could veer off on their own, wander inside the makeshift housing at the camp, explore the edges.

“For me, the object was to humanize something that is such a huge crisis,” Murali said, “and to have my students understand how refugees were living and the conditions in which they were living and to understand the magnitude of the refugee crisis.

“And I think the VR experience did that because it’s immersive. It does a better job of that than just watching the documentary would have.”

The experience of the Murali class, using Google Cardboard headsets with smartphones during winter term 2018, is an early example of VR technology being integrated into the classroom at Lawrence.��

Constance Kassor, an assistant professor of religious studies, followed suit this term, using the Google Cardboard headsets for students to explore religious sites in India and Tibet. Martyn Smith, associate professor of religious studies, has been dabbling in other uses of the technology in class.

More is on the way, be it VR, Augmented Reality (AR) or 3D technology.

The Makerspace wing of the Seeley G. Mudd Library, housing the early investments in that technology, has already been expanded and reconfigured since its launch three years ago.��

��Film Studies��

Seeley G. Mudd Library

The next step will come this summer when faculty representatives from Lawrence will join with other Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) schools for a conference on blending immersive technologies with liberal arts classrooms.

Lawrence, led by Reference and Learning Technologies Librarian Angela Vanden Elzen, and other ACM schools successfully sought a Faculty Career Enhancement (FaCE) grant to fund a two-day workshop in July aimed at kick-starting new collaborative efforts to share, promote and develop best practices for growing the use of VR, AR and 3D technologies in classrooms at 11 ACM schools.

The workshop will be held at Grinnell College and will be a jumping off point for collaboration that will be ongoing, Vanden Elzen said.

They’ll share not only the classroom potential of VR and AR but also some of the low-cost options that make the technology accessible without major blows to the budget. Murali, for example, is among the Lawrence professors already using Google Cardboard, a VR platform adaptable to a smartphone, available for as little as $10 each.��

“At a lot of these campuses, there is a small handful of people, in some cases maybe only one, who are doing this kind of stuff with their students,” Vanden Elzen said. “It’s going to provide a great opportunity for a bunch of people interested in VR and AR and 3D visualizations to share what we’ve learned.”

Pioneers in VR tech

Lawrence has had a handful of students dive into VR for their Chandler Senior Experience, including two this year under the guidance of Anne Haydock, assistant professor of film studies.

Two years ago, Christopher Gore-Gammon ’17 and Noah Gunther ’17 were pioneers of sorts, the first two Lawrence students to use VR in their Senior Experience projects.

Gore-Gammon, now a videographer with Lawrence after graduating with a degree in film/cinema/video studies, said helping Lawrence push forward on the use of VR and AR technologies was a big motivator for him.

“One of the reasons I did that project was not only to explore my interest in it but also to give Lawrence the chance to pioneer in an art medium and form that not many schools are doing yet,” he said. “You have your art schools here and there that are doing it, but liberal arts schools of this size aren’t even venturing close to it. So, to integrate VR and AR into not only the projects that students do but into the classroom itself gives Lawrence a unique opportunity to change how we approach pedagogy, and how we approach not only teaching the students that come in but also teaching each other.”

Piquing the interest of faculty

Getting faculty buy-in across campus is the next hurdle for many schools. Some schools have jumped into VR and AR technology with more enthusiasm than others. Some have faculty members already experienced in the new technologies. Others do not. Lawrence has made significant progress over the past couple of years but there is room to grow.��

What schools are finding, Vanden Elzen said, is that students are often ahead of their instructors in this technology and are pushing for it to be used in the classroom.��

Kassor called the new technology an innovative tool to get students engaged in exploration on a deeper level. In early February, 10 students in her class on Buddhism in India and Tibet used VR headsets to go on a virtual scavenger hunt, seeking and exploring monasteries, temples, statues and murals.

“I gave students a basic orientation in how to use the VR viewers and some apps they might want to look at on their phones,” Kassor said. “Then I kind of turned them loose and gave them time to explore, and then we had a kind of show-and-tell after they found things.

“The value of that for me was really just to give students another opportunity to explore things on their own rather than me curating content for them. It was really encouraging them to do something a little bit more than just a Google image search.”

The students’ enthusiasm reflected the growing interest in the technology, and the classroom possibilities, Kassor said.

At Lawrence, that growth in student interest can be seen in the Senior Experience projects as well as the daily traffic coming in and out of Makerspace.

“Students have been really embracing this,” Vanden Elzen said. “At first there were just a few students who would use this space. Now we’ve seen a lot of students embrace the space independently. So, it’s kind of come the other way around where the students are telling their professors what they’ve been making in the Makerspace.”

Meanwhile, Film Studies just got approval to create a high-end VR station just outside of Makerspace in the library. While the impetus came from Film Studies, it’ll be available to students across all majors, perhaps as early as the start of next term.

Film students “will use it to develop their own VR content to be used with the campus HTC Vive VR headsets,” Vanden Elzen said. “They’ll be using Unreal 4, a game-design program, and a 3D modeling program, probably Blendr, to create their content. … We’re hoping that by having this resource in the library, students from all majors will feel like this is available for them to use.”

That’s part of the VR momentum that’s building on campus, Gore-Gammon said.

“There are already multiple students who are interested,” he said. “They don’t have to be experts, but they’re interested. And soon we will go from the two people — me and this other student — two years ago to these students this year to eventually there will be 50 students who will want to do it, and that will be amazing.”

When Kassor and some of her students return to Nepal next year — a biennual trip — she hopes to have students create VR content that students back in Appleton can then access. That’s the next step in this VR journey, she said.

“We can bring some of that back and some of the students who don’t have the opportunity to travel can experience some of the same things the students who are traveling get to experience.”

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