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Earlham's
Peace & Global Studies 2004 Seniors
In alphabetical order: Mark Andreas, Schuyler
"Sky" Cunningham, Joy Ellison, Megan
Kennedy, Elizabeth Kropp, Jacob Laden, Jennifer Malley, Julie
McClure, Katherine Paul, Professor
Caroline Richards, Julie Riethmiller, Kristen
Roney, Patrick Sheehan-Gaumer, Rebecca "Bekka"
Smith, and Mark Webb.
Check
back soon for more senior profiles!
Mark Andreas, from Boulder, Colorado, age 22, is
fascinated with the social, political, economic, and environmental
aspects of community structures, with an interest in understanding
how we can best create communities that foster sustainable living
in a just and enjoyable way. Before college Mark spent three months
in Chile, traveling on his own between a number of host-families
in order to learn the language and experience the culture through
immersion. Mark has led a number of backpacking trips for Earlham,
culminating with the 2003 August Wilderness trip for in-coming Earlham
students: a month-long, 3 credit, back-country course in the Uintah
Mountains, Utah. During the month Mark taught the skills necessary
to live safely in the backcountry with minimal supplies, as well
as facilitating discussion and education reagarding leadership,
community, and the environment. He will lead the course again this
coming August. Mark has also recently finished his third draft of
a 300 page science fiction/fantasy novel, exploring issues of violence,
power, and justice in societies. He plans on getting the novel published
in the near future.
Megan
Kennedy - read
about her Watson project.
Julie
McClure's four years of Peace and Global Studies
at Earlham have been instrumental in her field work. Her interest
in social change in Latin America led Julie to spend the Spring
of 2002 in Central America. In Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua,
Julie studied Sustainable Economic Development, with special attention
to Christian Base Communities and Agricultural Cooperatives. Upon
return to the United States, Julie used Spanish as a spring board
for her academic work in Latino history and culture, as well as
volunteer work with Latino laborers. In the summer of 2003, Julie
worked closely with the International Chair of the War Resisters
League(WRL) in the New England office. Currently, Julie works for
the Earlham Peace and Global Studies office and is co-convenor for
the PAGS department meetings. Outside of Earlham, Julie recently
returned from a seminar on Solar Energy in Nicaragua. After graduation
she plans to continue her work for nonviolent social change and
development in Latin America. For the summer of 2004, Julie hopes
to lead a microlending program to promote reforestation and solar
energy resources in rural Nicaragua.
Katherine Paul is graduating with an interdepartmental
degree in Peace and Global Studies and Sociology/Anthropology. After
graduation she is planning on attending a training program for union
organizers or community organizers. Her current interests in organizing
and the labor movement were stimulated by her summer (2003)internship
with the AFL-CIO's Union Summer program and by the fall semester
she spent on the Earlham College Border Studies program living in
Ciudad Juarez and interning and taking classes in El Paso, Texas.
Julie
Elizabeth Riethmiller is a senior Peace and Global
Studies Major at Earlham College. During her three and a half years
at Earlham, she has taken numerous class that address social justice
in many various department such as philosophy, social science, politics,
and peace studies. The culmination of these experiences has allowed
her to conceptualize the complexity of social justice and the difficulties
of attempting to reconcile a myriad of views, all of which are justified.
Thus, she finds peace studies to be an engaging field of study,
one where she is constantly redefining her ideas and truly learning
something new everyday.
While at Earlham she had an opportunity to travel to Northern Ireland
and live and work in the province for eight months. The experience
of living in a divided society and witnessing the conflict of culture
and communal identity was unlike anything she had ever known. Her
eight months in Northern Ireland has taught her that achieving peace
is a process that must include all members of a community. She also
learned that conflict is not a
"bad thing," but rather an phenomenon that allows people
to explore different potentials of humanity. It is how a group manages
conflict that creates violence or harmony.
In a few months she will graduate from Earlham and move back to
Fort Wayne, IN where I am originally from. She plans to move to
Vancouver, Canada in August where she will work for a time at a
Buddhist monastery and hopefully find a job doing mediation or reconciliation
work. She is thinking about going to graduate school, but first
would like to take some time to immerse herself in community work
and gain hands on experience.
Rebecca
Smith, Peace and Global Studies Major, Economics
Minor, is a strongly motivated introvert (introversion is a good
thing!), specializing in international development and disability
studies. She was a foreign exchange student to India as a junior
in High School and developed a love for foreign travel and study.
She took a year away from Earlham College between her sophomore
and junior years and served as a City Year Corps member in Philadelphia,
tutoring and mentoring 7th and 8th grade inner-city students, developing
several service learning projects. The students ran a recycling
program, developed a brief training for 3rd and 4th grade students
on child abuse, and ran a can tab drive for Ronald McDonald House.
During this year, Rebecca also came to terms with her new diagnosis
of myasthenia gravis, a rare neuromuscular disease. When she returned
to campus, she entered a new phase of activism related to disability
studies: developing her own course, working her interests into the
Peace and Global Studies Senior Presentation, and helping to organize/
create Earlham’s celebration of Disability Awareness Month
this coming March. Currently she is trying to balance academic interests,
volunteer activities and the necessity of self-activism on a campus
where accessibility is not a priority. She hopes to pursue a career
in International Development, Disability Studies, or some blend
of the two after graduation.
Mark Webb is graduating with a Peace and Globals
Studies major with a focus in the Spanish language and a minor in
philosophy. Mark spent an influential semester on the US/Mexico
border learning first hand about the social, cultural, and economic
effects of the latest era of global capitalism. After graduation,
Mark is looking into grad school while preparing to spend half a
year in Nicaragua working with Grupo Fenix, a community solar energy
organization working on various projects in and around the capital
city of Managua.
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