Faculty Scholars: Pursuing Knowledge with Passion

Take a look at what makes this year's Faculty Scholars stand out

by Mary Jo Curtis

On a campus teeming with gifted and talented students, what makes one stand out from the rest? In a word, passion.

"Without passion, you have nothing," says Associate Professor Matthew Gutmann, who sponsored anthropology student Ariana Aguilar '05 (below) as one of this year's Faculty Scholars. "You have to have an original way of looking at a problem, and then actually be able to ... do something about it."

For the past two summers, Aguilar's passion led her to Oaxaca, one of the poorest areas in Mexico, where she assisted Gutmann with his fieldwork. There, she examined the local culture of sexuality and gender while tackling one of the area's most daunting problems - HIV and AIDS.

Targeting residents ages nine to twenty-one, Aguilar led sex education workshops and worked with several organizations offering information, treatment, testing, and contraceptives to disadvantaged youth in outlying areas and prisons. Her mission was both academic and personal.

"I wanted to see how [sex] information was presented, what's given emphasis, and how that information shapes sexuality," she says. "And I wanted to work with Latin Americans and marginalized populations."

Aguilar easily identifies with these populations. A native of Mexico, she came to the United States as an illegal immigrant. She has vivid memories of crossing the border - not once, but three times - with false documents and under the guidance of the infamous "coyotes" who traffic in human cargo. She left Mexico initially in 1989, along with her mother and brother, to join her father, who had gone ahead to make a home for the family in New York City. She and her mother briefly returned to Mexico twice when her grandmother became ill.

The transition to life in a new country "was such a shock for me," she says, noting she was allowed to bring only one change of clothes and money across the border. "My mother's family was very close, so we had to get over that. It was very tough for my parents... it takes a long, long time to get residency."

Currently awaiting citizenship, Aguilar plans to pursue a doctoral degree in anthropology, but first she hopes to get a grant or fellowship that will allow her to continue her work in Latin America next year. If she needs an enthusiastic reference, she'll have no difficulty getting one from Gutmann.

"She is among those rare students who daily remind us why we became teachers," says Gutmann. "An exceptionally talented, articulate, and creative young scholar, in her intellectual endeavors Ariana combines an ethnographer's compassion with an illegal immigrant's passion."

Although they manifest it differently, such passion also is evident in the work of the other five students selected as Faculty Scholars this year. Andrew Altieri, a fourth-year doctoral candidate specializing in marine ecology, is a "ferocious fieldworker," according to his nominator, Jon Witman, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

Witman says it's not unusual for Altieri to spend fifteen hours a day on Narragansett Bay, in a boat or below the surface, monitoring his underwater field stations.

"The bay is so murky that he has devised a system of ropes to pull himself along" from one underwater station to another, says Witman. Altieri and colleagues dive for ninety to 120 minutes at a time. "When they come up, Andrew grabs some fresh water, but rarely eats - and then he hits the lab to process his specimens."

Daniel Orenstein, a special studies doctoral student sponsored by the Center for Environmental Studies, has advocated combining ecological needs and land use policies in the most challenging of locations: the Middle East. Last year Orenstein organized the Middle East Environmental Futures Project, an interdisciplinary, multicultural research project uniting leading Arab and Israeli academics - some of whom put themselves at personal risk by collaborating with political foes.

"Daniel knows how to lead by example," according to advisor Steven Hamburg, the Ittleson associate professor of environmental studies. Hamburg says he "hopes [Orenstein's] skills and knowledge make a difference in the Middle East, either as an academic or leading an environmental organization. If anyone can pull this off, he can. I have no doubt he will make it happen."

When Spencer Campbell '05 came to Brown, he already exhibited a "devotion to British and American literature and creative writing," says his nominator, Professor of Religious Studies Susan Harvey. Seeking background perspective for some of his favorite authors, he soon delved into religious studies with the same "voracious devotion to learning" and has become "the shining star" among her strongest students, according to Harvey.

"He raises the bar at every turn, and his peers respond to the intellectual integrity of his efforts. But it's Spencer's command of the written word that sets him apart," particularly in his analysis of his subjects of study, says Harvey. "He writes with precision, clarity, and elegance ... . No one who has taught him can read the same texts, or ask the same questions, in quite the same way again."

Meadow Dibble-Dieng, a graduate student in French studies, is a talented journalist and a "spectacular" teacher with a "dynamic intellectual personality," says her nominator, Professor of French Studies Sanda Golopentia. Dibble-Dieng's talents extend to new media; in 2003 she co-founded and edited Equinoxes, an online graduate journal in French and Francophone studies. She went on to create other research sites, including a bibliography of African cinema, and another on the literature and culture of Francophone Africa and the Diaspora. Last year she organized Brown's first African Film Festival.

"She combines unity of purpose with an open mind and a tireless capacity for both individual and team work," says Golopentia.

Lastly, Ryan Roark '05 is passionate about it all. She transferred to Harvard to study chemistry after her first year at Brown, but returned a semester later when she realized Harvard lacked the flexibility of the Brown curriculum.

"I wasn't done with the other things," explains Roark, now a triple concentrator in mathematics, comparative literature, and biology. Recently named a Marshall Scholar, she'll head to Cambridge University next fall to begin graduate studies in pediatric oncology. In the meantime, she's translating a sixteenth-century novel, among other things.

"She is exceptional," notes Professor of Mathematics Thomas Banshoff, Roark's sponsor. Gutmann echoed that sentiment about the group as a whole, predicting, "They will go on to become exceptional scholars in whatever field they choose."