Royster Society of Fellows

Related links:

2009-2010 Fellows

Dede Addy, Education, Chancellor's Fellowship
Oluseyi (Day) Alaba, Information & Library Science, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow
Oluseyi (Day) Alaba

Day comes to Carolina with tons of experience. She attended Occidental College in Diplomacy and World Affairs where she earned her undergraduate degree. She also has extensive international experience including studying Japanese at Waseda University in Japan and had an internship at the United Nations where she used data modeling techniques to study economic convergence theories. She also traveled and studied in Nigeria, England, Holland, Austria, Italy, South Korea, and Cuba. Day is “interested in serving altruistic organizations” with skills cultivated at Carolina.

Rebecca Aldrich, Occupational Science, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Rebecca Aldrich

Beccy was busy this past year. She published her first two papers (one as a first author, one as a second author) in the October 2008 issue of the Journal of Occupational Science. During spring semester she taught her first class, the History of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy and she will be teaching it again this year. She also received a Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant from the Center for Global Initiatives to travel to Sweden for research methodology training. Currently she has a paper out for review, and has been invited to co-author two forthcoming book chapters. In addition, she successfully passed her written comprehensive exam in January, her oral comprehensive exam in February, and defended her dissertation proposal at the beginning of May.

Anne Bakken, Linguistics, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Anne Bakken

Anne is pursuing her doctoral degree in linguistics at Carolina. She excels equally in qualitative and quantitative research. Anne obtained an undergraduate degree from the University of North Dakota-Grand Forks, earning a Bachelor’s of Arts in English, combining her literary studies with a minor in mathematics. She achieved high marks in courses like algebra and set theory. Her quantitative GRE score also corroborates her ability to understand the formal and quantitative reasoning that is increasingly necessary in linguistics.

Brenda Baletti, Geography, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Brenda Baletti

Brenda passed her qualifying exams, defended her dissertation proposal and advanced to candidacy in the Department of Geography. In January, she left Chapel Hill to do a year of dissertation field work in the Brazilian Amazon where she is studying conflict over access to land rights along a road that is being paved to move soy harvests from the south of Brazil to the Amazon River for export. In addition to the grants she was awarded last year (Fulbright and SSRC), she was awarded an NSF DDRI grant to complete this research. She is currently doing fieldwork and things are going great. This year she also published a paper, “More than movement(s): Understanding Smallholder Politics in the Brazilian Amazon,” which is forthcoming in the Journal of Peasant Studies.

Sarah Barksdale, History, William Neal Reynolds Fellow
Sarah Barksdale

Over the past year Sarah expanded and refined her master’s thesis, “Stationed in the Borderlands: A Study of African American Soldiers in World War II”, which she then successfully defended in April. Her thesis was a study about African American soldiers in World War II. She gathered information from previously performed interviews with veterans regarding their experiences and analyzed their stories using theories by W.E.B. DuBois on black (double) consciousness. During the spring semester, she began working on her dissertation prospectus. She mapped out the ways she will expand her research. After she completes her prospectus in the fall, she will continue her research, holding her own interviews with veterans. Her goal is to have the first chapter of her dissertation written by the end of this upcoming academic year.

“Thank you so much for the support, I am very excited about moving forward with my research this coming year.”

Devin Barrett, Chemistry, Charles Lee Raper Dissertation Fellowship

Devin is creative, enthusiastic and able to incorporate ideas from a number of different fields into his own research. In fact, much of Devin’s research was initiated by his own ideas and his ability to learn and employ skills outside the expertise of his lab. He has pioneered efforts in the lab where he works to combine polymers, surface chemistry and cell biology to study complex problems in biomedical fields. These efforts will culminate in his dissertation work which will focus on the potential uses of polyketoesters in tissue engineering. Polyketoesters contain ketone, a chemical group that allows for efficient modifications that enable this group of polyesters to accommodate multiple biological functions. In addition, polyketoesters can be synthesized from materials that are already FDA approved, making them more likely to be viable for widespread medical use.

Jenny Barrier, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Mrs. Victor Humphreys Fellow
Jenny Barrier

This summer, Jenny prepares to take her comprehensive exams this upcoming year. She also continues to conduct research for her dissertation which will examine how the arguments for and against the education of women are reflected in the image of the woman reader in literature. She will be looking at articles on women's education in the Russian press from the latter half of the nineteenth century.

This past academic year, she taught one and a half semesters of first year Russian. She did not complete teaching the second semester of Russian as she was on maternity leave following the birth of her son, Alistair Charlton Barrier on March 27.

Janel Beckham, Communication Studies, William Neal Reynolds Fellow
Janel Beckham

Janel received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Virginia Tech, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in visual communication from American Intercontinental University, and a Master of Arts in communication studies from San Diego State University, before entering UNC-Chapel Hill’s doctoral program in communication studies. While pursuing a diverse research agenda, focusing on issues of social justice and community activism, during the 2007-2008 school year and working toward the completion of an interdisciplinary certificate in cultural studies, Janel became active in UNC-Chapel Hill’s student government. Janel served the Communication Studies Graduate Student Association (GSA) as a conference coordinator. In 2008-2009, she will serve as co-president and has also been appointed to the executive cabinet of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation (GPSF) as the diversity advocate.

Kristen Bell, Philosophy, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow
Kristen Bell

Kristen presented her paper, “Forgiveness as an Alternate Response to Wrongdoing,” at the American Philosophical Association, pacific division, conference. She also passed her bibliography exam this past year.

Kristen applied to law school and was accepted at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. She will finish her dissertation this year and move to California to attend Stanford in the fall 2010.

Andrew Belton, English & Comparative Literature, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Chris Cameron, History, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Chris Cameron

In 2007-2008, Chris, a 2nd year Royster Fellow in the department of history, completed his master’s thesis. It explored the ideological origins of African American political thought in eighteenth century Massachusetts, locating it primarily in Puritan religious beliefs and practice. He then linked black political activity in the state to the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in Massachusetts. The time period he examined for the thesis was 1641-1788. His dissertation will continue in this line of research, extending the chronology to 1831.

Elena Clark, Slavic Languages and Literatures, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow
Elena Clark

In fall 2008, Elena, along with Fellows Vincent Gonzalez, Leigh-Anne Krometis, and Michelle Leslie, had the rewarding experience of teaching the interdisciplinary first-year seminar they had designed, “Cheating Death, Chasing Immortality.” In spring 2009, Elena turned her attention back to her own discipline and passed her qualifying exams in both her major and minor subjects. This summer, she taught a course on Russian literature. In the meantime her fellow teachers from the cheating death class are planning on writing an article on interdisciplinary teaching.

Rajeev Colaco, Maternal and Child Health, Joseph E. Pogue Fellow
Rajeev Colaco

This year, Rajeev received the 2009 Deshpande Foundation Global Exchange Program Innovators Award to implement an intervention to promote gender equality and HIV prevention for late-adolescent boys in higher secondary schools in India’s Karnataka state. In addition, he was elected to the board of Kiran, an organization providing crisis counseling to victims of domestic violence of South Asian origin in North Carolina. And, through the UNC Student Global Health Committee, he serves as a community educator making HIV/AIDS awareness presentations for North Carolina school children. Rajeev also stayed busy academically, presenting abstracts at the following conferences: Population Association of America (PAA) Conference in Detroit, Michigan; UNC Global Womens Health Series, 'AIDS, Rights and Law' Conference organized by UNDP and International Council for Research on Women (ICRW), Cuernavaca, Mexico, February 2009. Currently Rajeev is working on his dissertation and he plans to graduate in May 2010.

Emanuel Coman, Political Science, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellowship
Christian Conkle, Music, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow
Christian Conkle

In the past year Christian passed his qualifying exams and completed his master’s thesis, “Building Our Cultural Defenses: The Noninterventionist Rhetoric of the National Federation of Music Clubs.”

John Corn, Physics and Astronomy, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow

John is enjoying his first year as a graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He worked on calculating some scattering amplitudes for particles which mediate the strong nuclear force (gluons). These are functions which depend on the polarization of incoming particles which can be used to calculate cross sections, which are the quantities measured at particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Within the last six years or so, some physicists have figured out how to express scattering amplitudes in a simplified version of the standard model called N=4 super Yang-Mills as a collection of curves in “twistor space”, a mathematical object originally used in an attempt to quantize gravity decades ago. This expression of the theory allows calculations of gluon amplitudes which would take infeasible amounts of time using Feynman graphs, the traditional method. A particular six-particle amplitude he is trying to calculate would require adding up hundreds of contributions associated with these graphs. Even the twistor calculations are very lengthy and require both creativity and careful attention to the mathematics.

“These calculations are particularly pleasing for me because there is so much misinformation in popular books and the media about an alleged lack of predictive power of string theory. These calculations are part of a growing trend of stringy calculations having much more to tell us than field theory. Over the last year I have found out about the very harsh reality of funding for theoretical physics, and my odds of getting a job in theory are probably similar to those of playing for the NBA. However, this fellowship allows me at least a few years to do what I love, so you can tell the donors I am extremely grateful for that,” he said.

Elicia Cowins, Business Administration, Chancellor's Fellowship
Christopher Dahlie, Communication Studies, Chancellor's Fellowship
Jameela Dallis, English and Comparative Literature, William Neal Reynolds Fellow
Jameela Dallis

This summer Jameela is working on her masters’ thesis. She is researching Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, which she plans to complete and submit for review in the fall. She is also working as a research assistant in the University’s libraries over the summer.

Bryan Der, Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Joseph E. Pogue Fellow
Bryan Der

Bryan is enjoying life as a graduate student in Chapel Hill. He achieved high-passes in each of his courses and was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to complement his Pogue fellowship. He is joining the Kuhlman lab in biochemistry/biophysics, where he will work on protein design. He has some very promising initial results to build on this summer and is writing a manuscript to submit for publication from the work did in his third lab rotation of ten weeks.

Hayley Dirscherl, Biomedical Engineering, Joseph E. Pogue Fellowship
Sarah Dooley, English & Comparative Literature, John Motley Morehead Fellowship
Sarah Dooley
John Charles Duffy, Religious Studies, William Neal Reynolds Fellow

John-Charles Duffy is continues work on his dissertation “Christians, Cultists, Cobelligerents: Mormon-Evangelical Relations in the Era of the New Religious Right.” He has received one of the most prestigious fellowships in his field, the Louisville Institute Dissertation Fellowship, to fund his dissertation work. Though still in progress, his dissertation has yielded two smaller papers, “‘Ecumenism of the Trenches’: Evangelicals, Interfaith Dialogue, and the Religious Right” and “Belief Matters to the Religious Right: Evangelical-Mormon Interfaith Dialogue and the Mitt Romney Campaign,” that John-Charles presented at academic conferences this spring. Outside of dissertation work, John-Charles has been both writing and presenting on Mormonism for both academic and lay audiences.

Sherine El-Toukhy, Journalism and Mass Communication, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow

Sherine has published four papers this year, winning awards for two and has had two more papers accepted to upcoming conferences.

Elizabeth Evans, Human Movement Science, John Motley Morehead Fellow

Beth just completed her first year of graduate school at Carolina. A paper she co-wrote titled, “Aerobic Exercise Intensity in Breast Cancer Patients: A Preliminary Investigation” will be published in this month’s issue of Integrative Cancer Therapies journal. Also during her first year of graduate school, she gave birth to her daughter, Alexandra Skye Evans on May 4th. Mom, dad, and baby are doing great!

Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz, Communication Studies, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz

Natalie completed her third year of doctoral studies, with many noteworthy successes. In November, she presented two papers at the National Communications Association's annual convention in San Diego, California. This spring, she finished her coursework and a reading list for her comprehensive exams, which are scheduled for this coming fall. She has also begun a draft of her dissertation prospectus, and is scheduled to defend it in December. Natalie has also excelled in her teaching and service commitments to the Department of Communication Studies. As a co-recipient of the Ueltschi APPLES Service-Learning Course Development Grant, Natalie developed and taught a brand new service-learning course for her department titled “Communication Activism” with her colleague, Billie Murray. The course was a tremendous success, and Billie and Natalie were the recipients of the Martha Nell Harding Teaching Award from the department in April. Natalie also served as co-president of the Graduate Student Association, and won a departmental award for her leadership and service in this capacity.

Theresa Marie Forshey, Biomedical Engineering, Joseph E. Pogue Fellow
Theresa Marie Forshey

Prior to enrolling in the doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering at Carolina, Theresa earned her B.S. here in Applied Science-Biomedical Engineering. In addition to her academic success, Theresa has worked in laboratories at UNC-Chapel Hill, with applicable experience working on the implementation of a data acquisition system. Theresa’s interests in Biomedical Engineering are broad, though she has a particular interest in biorobotics.

Theodore Gellar-Goad, Classics, William Neal Reynolds Fellow
Theodore Gellar-Goad

In the fall, Ted completed his thesis, titled “Sacrifice and ritual imagery in Menander, Plautus, and Terence,” and also received my M.A. degree and in the spring, he completed his Ph.D. coursework. This year Ted also presented three papers at conferences and for one of those papers received an Honorable Mention for Outstanding Graduate Student Paper. He was also nominated and selected to serve as Graduate Liaison on the Steering Committee of the Women's Classical Caucus, the women's studies and issues affiliate of the American Philological Association.

Andrew George, Ecology, Charles Alphonso Smith Dissertation Fellowship

Andrew's dissertation “Democracy, Conservation and National Forest Management” attempts to find new, interdisciplinary methods to build a knowledge base regarding the constraints and opportunities for environmental management. Andrew’s knowledge in this area is superb and he has recently been invited to serve on the Board of Directors of a natural resource non-profit group in the Southeastern U.S.

Zoe Gibbons, English & Comparative Literature, Chancellor's Fellowship
Paul Gilbert, Health Behavioral and Health Education, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow
Paul Gilbert

After earning a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Michigan, Paul Gilbert went on to accomplish a great deal over a 12-year period. During that time he provided direct service to disenfranchised populations, including runaway and homeless teens, he conducted hands-on public health work in Central Africa through the Peace Corps, and he addressed health disparities in the Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the U.S. These experiences led him to pursue formal training in public health, prompting him to earn a master’s degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. After graduation he worked as a Research Associate and then a Senior Research Associate for the Center for Health Improvement and Prevention Studies at the University of California-San Francisco. He has co-authored five publications in highly respected journals. While living in San Francisco, Paul also worked at the Berkeley Free Clinic, where he was a volunteer medic in a men’s STD and hepatitis clinic.

Joseph Gindi, Religious Studies, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow

Joseph Gindi is a first-year doctoral student in the Religious Studies Department with a B.A. from Wesleyan University. He comes to UNC with a clearly defined plan for doctoral research on the term tikkun olam, a Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world.” Specifically, Joseph is pursuing an ethnographically grounded study of progressive rhetoric in and around reinvented Jewish communities, all of which is grounded in an intellectual and cultural-historical account of the term’s itinerary from the late Middle Ages to late-20th century America.

Shelley Golden, Public Policy, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Shelley Golden

Shelley received her Bachelor’s of Science in biology from Yale University and an Master’s in Public Health in health behavior and health education from UNC Chapel Hill. Her exceptional work history demonstrates a continuous commitment to improving the condition of human life through research, publication and service. She has developed and supervised peer education programs on sexuality and reproductive health, and she supervised the daily operation of the Carolina Women’s Center. Additionally, she has served as vice president of the Board of Directors for the Orange County (N.C.) Rape Crisis Center. Her contributions to the furthering of health education are evident in her research where she has researched and written numerous policy briefs for leading health policy groups such as the North Carolina Health Access Coalition. She also instructed two residential courses and one online course on designing interventions and conducting program evaluations in public health. Shelley hopes to merge her economics and public health backgrounds to further improve upon the political and economic forces that shape the development of health services in the United States. Specifically, her doctoral research interests focus on welfare, Medicaid and women’s health.

Anupama Gomez, Maternal and Child Health, Jessie Ball duPont Dissertation Fellowship

Anupama is self-motivated, self-confident and committed to better understanding and preventing violence against women, particularly those in developing nations. Her dissertation will examine the impact of adherence to inequitable gender norms on relationship dynamics, contraceptive use and intimate partner violence among Brazilian youth. Anupama has already collected quantitative data and will travel to Brazil again this summer to collect quantitative data.

Diana Gomez Correal, Anthropology, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Vincent Gonzalez, Religious Studies, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellowship
Vincent Gonzalez
Mark Gramling, Pathology, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Mark Gramling
James Grinias, Chemistry, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Yeongmi Ha, Nursing, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellowship
Yeongmi Ha
Sara Hanson-Hedgecock, Geological Sciences, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Katherine Harrold, Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Joseph E. Pogue Fellowship
Kendra Heatwole-Shank, Occupational Science, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Kendra Heatwole-Shank

Kendra enjoyed her first year in graduate school. She took a full course load of classes in a variety of departments (occupational science, sociology, and education). She also was able to continue working on several projects that she began while she was getting her master’s. Kendra presented her paper, “Transactional Occupations of Older Women Aging in Place: Negotiating Change and Meaning” at the Society for the Study of Occupation and later it was published in her discipline’s leading journal. She also presented a poster at the annual Aging Exchange hosted by UNC Chapel Hill last fall and at the annual research meeting of the American Occupational Therapy Association this past spring. She is grateful to have a paper presentation and a publication under her belt.

Kendra also began some new ventures, including acting as a proctor for the Health Affairs Interdisciplinary Case Conference, where students from the different health disciplines work in teams to create a plan of care. This summer, Kendra is working part time on two NIH/NIA-funded grants through the Institute on Aging. They focus on preventive home visits for frail older adults to maximize function and minimize disability, and health care usage disparities in post-acute care in North Carolina and other states.

Maile Henson, Neurobiology, Charles Lee Raper Dissertation Fellowship

Maile’s research focuses on the mechanisms by which neurons strengthen and weaken their synaptic connections as well as the impact of these changes in connection strength. Her background is not that of your average graduate student. Maile enjoyed biology in college, but chose to wait to pursue a graduate education until after she had raised a family. She worked as a lab technician to support her family and enrolled in graduate school after her children had gone to college. The wait seems to have heightened her excitement about science. Her advisor says, “You will never meet someone more enthusiastic about scientific research than Maile.”

Daniel Holbrow, Anthropology, Joseph E. Pogue Fellow
Daniel Holbrow

Before coming to UNC, Daniel received his master’s in anthropology from the University of Regina. His master's thesis, entitled “Cosmology, Practice, and Power: Ritual, Agriculture and Pre-Colonial Politics in Bali”. During this research, he developed interests in collective memory, materiality, and cosmology.

In 2007-2008, Daniel continued to explore these themes in Indonesia in his recent work on the World Heritage Site at Borobudur, in Central Java. This project looked at the ways in which Borobudur, an ancient Buddhist temple was shaped by historians' and heritage workers' understandings of the national and regional past.

Daniel is currently conducting research into the role of the dead in Indonesian society. He is particularly interested in applying practice-theoretical and phenomenological approaches in an ethnographic study of the tombs of significant historical figures, such as political leaders and Muslim saints, in Central and East Java.

Matthew Horne, Economics, Wiliam Neal Reynolds Fellowship
Brian Jones, Music, Chancellor's Fellowship
Jessica Kadis, Health Behavior & Health Education, Joseph E. Pogue Fellowship
Ja Hyun Kang, Nursing, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Ja Hyun Kang

Ja comes to UNC Chapel Hill after working for 10 years as a professional nurse. She earned two undergraduate degrees in nursing and sociology from Korea University, where she ultimately was awarded the “President’s Prize” by the Korean Nurses Association as “the most excellent” nursing student in the country. During Ja’s first few months in practice, her interest in, and concern about, infection control began. After multiple appeals to her hospital’s administration, Ja became the first Infection Control Nurse at Korea University’s Medical Center. She independently developed and applied infection control standards across the institution, wrote the first infection control policy and procedure manual in her country, and developed an infection control surveillance system that was integrated with the new Order Communication System, another “first” for a Korean hospital. The early efforts eventually became the benchmark against which all others in her country were compared. In 2003 Ja moved to the newly opened Bundang Hospital, where she built an infection control system within the hospital’s electronic medical record – another first in Korea.

While implementing these groundbreaking programs, she also obtained a master’s in public health with a focus in epidemiology. She has since launched five interdisciplinary research projects and served as first author on two data-based articles. She also has authored eight book chapters, four of which are in the primary text used by infection control nurses throughout Asia. She has guest lectured for the Korean Alliance to Defeat AIDS and taught epidemiology at the University of Ulsan’s College of Medicine. Furthermore, she is actively involved in the Lorean Association of Infection Control committee, serving as the director of their planning and legislative committees, heading the examination committee, and overseeing the certification of infection control nurses in Korea. Ja serves on the editorial board for the Korean Journal of Nosocomial Infection Control, and she was only the fifth person in Korea to achieve Certification in Infection Control and Epidemiology through an international accrediting body. Ja is pursuing a doctorate in nursing. Her dissertation will focus on cost analyses of infection control programs in Korea.

Erik Karlsson, Nutrition, William Whatley Pierson Dissertation Fellowship

Erik’s dissertation work focuses on the effects of obesity on immune response and immune memory. His preliminary work demonstrates that mice with diet induced obesity have a problem generating efficient immune memory against the influenza virus. Now Erik is working on understanding the mechanisms responsible for this immune dysfunction.

Megan Kassabaum, Anthropology, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow
Megan Kassabaum

Meg has completed most of her fieldwork and submitted a draft of her dissertation proposal this spring. In addition to working on her proposal and analysis, she spent a lot of time this year working on her teaching. She taught the Anthropology Department's honors thesis class working with seniors graduating with honors and she is currently participating in the Future Faculty Fellowship Program. Next fall she will be teaching an interdisciplinary first year seminar and taking her qualifying exams.

Christine Kenison, Germanic Languages, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
David Kikuchi, Biology, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
David Kikuchi

This past year, David did background research and field work on the evolution of Batesian mimicry. In Batesian mimicry, harmless organism resembles a dangerous, warning-colored one, gaining protection from predators. It is one of the oldest, most powerful examples of natural selection to produce both complexity and precise adaptation. He will complete his field work this fall.

Elizabeth King, Health Behavior and Health Education, Edwin A. Greenlaw Dissertation Fellowship

Elizabeth is studying HIV risk among marginalized women in St. Petersburg, Russia. Though HIV continues to rise among this population, marginalized women continue to underutilize HIV prevention services provided by the Russian government. Elizabeth has spent the past year in St. Petersburg conducting interviews and surveys to gather data. Through her research, she hopes to gather the information necessary to better prevent HIV infection among this vulnerable and understudied population.

Bethany Kok, Psychology, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow
Bethany Kok

This spring Bethany passed her comprehensive exams and successfully defended her master’s thesis. A paper based on this thesis is under review at Perspectives on Psychological Science — a major journal in her field. Bethany has also been teaching Introduction to Social Psychology and has been recognized for her teaching ability two semesters running. She is also the recipient of this year’s Psychology Club Graduate Mentoring Award.

Suprateek Kundu, Biostatistics, William Neal Reynolds Fellow

Suprateek just completed his first year of graduate school at UNC Chapel Hill. He took courses in the biostatistics department and is now preparing for his qualifying exams, which he will take in August.

Suprateek also worked on a project in survival analysis. He conducted research dealing with the “Number Needed to Treat” problem. It involved finding out how many patients are required to be treated in a randomized clinical trial comparing two treatments, a test treatment and a placebo, in order to have one more positive response with the test treatment as compared to the placebo.

This past year, the biostatistics department recognized Suprateek by honoring him with the Hardison Award in Bio-informatics.

Suprateek is grateful for the fellowship provided to him by the Reynolds Foundation. “[It] has given me a lot of exposure and confidence to go out there and change the world!”

Beth Latshaw, Sociology, Paul Hardin Dissertation Fellowship

Beth's research will take a look at stay-at-home dads, a much discussed but little-researched group. Using an innovative approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods, she hopes to gain a better understanding of this emerging form or family life.

Hyejin Lee, Art, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Lucia Leone, Nutrition, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Lucia Leone

Lucia continues to work on her dissertation titled, “Weight-related disparities in colorectal cancer prevention behaviors.” Her goal is to better understand why women who are overweight are less likely to engage in cancer prevention behaviors (such as screening or physical activity) and to develop intervention messages which would increase prevention behaviors in this population. Also during 2008-2009, she presented her research at two national conferences and a poster she presented won awards at two different university events. Along with two other nutrition students, Lucia competed in the Carolina Challenge. Their business plan which consisted of starting a non-profit organization and restaurant that serves healthy/local/organic food at fast food prices was awarded honorable mention. Now they are currently in the process of starting this venture. Finally, Lucia was awarded the Robert and Kristen Greczyn Scholarship in Public Health for 2009. She will use this money towards her non-profit.

Steven Lewis, Biochemistry and Biophysics, Joseph E. Pogue Fellow
Steven Lewis

Steven has been working steadily on his thesis project since passing the biochemistry qualifying exam last May. His project is developing a new method for designing new protein-protein interactions. He’s also been collaborating with partners at Caltech on another protein-protein interface which he expects to publish soon. Much of Steven’s progress this year has taken place in some new surroundings. He, and the rest of the Biochemistry Department, moved into the new Genetic Medicine building in November 2008. Steven says there have been a few kinks to work out with the new lab space but it’s been exciting.

Yannick Louis-Charles, Education, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Yannick Louis-Charles
Amy Shirong Lu, Journalism and Mass Communication, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Amy Shirong Lu

Amy’s dissertation is on psychological mechanisms of narratives in health persuasion. More specifically, she explores the role mass customization plays in creating effective public narrative. She won several awards including: top student paper award (fourth top paper overall in the division), Health Communication Division, National Communication Association, 2008; and the Graduate Student Mentor Grant, Office of Undergraduate Research, UNC Chapel Hill, 2007. Her paper titled “Frustration or relief? The impact of feelings about the search on the outcomes of online health information seeking” won first place in Jung-Sook Lee Student Paper Competition hosted by the Communication Technology Division in the Annual Conference of Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. She also has two referred academic publications, one in the Journalism and Mass Communication Educator and the other in Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Amy served as a reviewer for CyberPsychology and Behavior in spring 2008, is a member of the UNC Chapel Hill Graduate and Professional Student Association Cabinet, and was a simultaneous interpreter for the Partnership for Social Service Research on HIV/AIDS in China in October 2007.

In May 2007, Amy presented three papers at the International Communication Association’s annual conference in San Francisco, California. In August 2007, she attended the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. and participated on a research panel. In November 2007, she presented a paper at the National Communication Association’s annual conference in Chicago.

Hanlin Luo, Materials Sciences (CASE), Wiliam Neal Reynolds Fellowship
L. Ward Lyles, City and Regional Planning, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
L. Ward Lyles

Ward and his wife welcomed their second child, Ben, in December. Like his brother Jonah, aged 3, Ben has a sweet disposition and a healthy appetite. In spite of the inevitable sleep deprivation, Ward wrapped up his coursework and is excited to concentrate on Department of Homeland Security-funded research on natural hazard mitigation planning, especially work exploring linkages to climate change adaptation.

Sara Mamo, Speech & Hearing Sciences, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Eric Mandelbaum, Philosophy, Thomas S. and Helen Borda Royster and Snowden and Elspeth Merck Henry Dissertation Fellowship.

Eric's dissertation, “The Architecture of Belief” seeks to change how both philosophers and cognitive scientists understand belief. The dissertation will contend that belief the default cognitive state, rather than the result of a two step process of weighing and then accepting information. The implications of Eric’s work are drawing great interest among those who study philosophy. One of his recommenders summed it up saying, “I have not been involved with any doctoral thesis more worthy of support. Mandelbaum’s project is the kind of thing that makes me excited about philosophy.”

Karla Martin, Education, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow

Karla completed the first year of her Ph.D. program and is excited to start her second year this fall. This past year, Karla decided that she wanted to focus her studies and dissertation on Native American children and youth education and identity. She worked with the UNC teaching fellows to help create lessons and teach those lessons at North Carolina tribal schools and schools with native students.

Karla also presented two papers at American Educational Studies Association (AESA) in October 2008 and was just recently accepted to present a paper at the same conference in 2009. Also, this year she taught a social studies and multicultural class to undergraduates in the elementary education program. Finally this fall, she will co-teach with other fellows a class to honors students: Negotiating Identity. “All of my 3 years at Carolina have been great and full of many great opportunities. I look forward to the coming years and graduating from Carolina.”

Allison Mathews, Sociology, Mrs. Victor Humphreys Fellow
Allison Mathews

Allison continues her studies in sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is completing her masters’ thesis titled, “Black Masculinity: An Examination of the Coping Mechanisms used by Black Men to Deal with Stress Associated with Gender Non-Conformity.” Her research focuses on the ways in which religious coping and religiosity play a role in coping with stress in different contexts. She gathered her information by working on several projects, one of which looked at the influence of religiosity and spirituality in the lives of Latin American immigrants to the United States. She worked closely on this project with Dr. Jacqueline Hagan in the Department of Sociology.

In June 2009, she presented a collaborative paper at the Black Graduate Conference in Psychology entitled, “Does Religious Coping Moderate the Impact of Racism-Related Stress on Depressive Symptoms Among African American Men?” The preliminary findings show that those who experience high levels of racial discrimination and use high religious coping are less likely to express depressive symptoms. Also this summer, Alison attended the annual Preparing Future Faculty Summer Institute sponsored by Howard University, the University of Texas at El Paso, and UNC Chapel Hill. She feels this seminar experience will help prepare her for a successful career in research and academia. Lastly, Alison is working as a research assistant with the LinCS 2 Durham project. This community-based participatory research project is co-sponsored by Family Health International (FHI), North Carolina Central University, and UNC Chapel Hill. It will examine the ways in which members of the Black community can gain more trust and interest in participating in HIV/AIDS prevention research in Durham County.

Derrick Matthews, Health Behavior & Health Education, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellowship
Elizabeth McKinney, Political Science, Chancellor's Fellowship
Micaela Mercado, Social Work, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Micaela Mercado

During her first year as a Royster Fellow, Micaela focused on successfully completing coursework in her social work program. Over the summer, Micaela traveled to China, visiting Beijing and Shanghai, and learned about China’s social service systems. Her group collaborated with scholars with the Eastern University in Shanghai visiting various hospitals and schools.

She also was a research assistant for Michal Weis-Grenstein this summer. She conducted research on asset development among low-income populations.

Louis Merlin, City & Regional Planning, Chancellor's Fellowship
Jeffrey Muehlbauer, Ecology, Joseph E. Pogue Fellow
Jeffrey Muehlbauer

Jeff enjoyed his second year in graduate school at Carolina. He spent most of this past year analyzing data for his master’s thesis in ecology, and he defended it in August. He also began his Ph.D. work this summer and spent good deal of time spent collecting data in the beautiful Great Smoky Mountains region of North Carolina. Jeff also joined his family ranks of published scientists, having published his first paper in a freshwater ecology journal this past January.

Melanie Napier, Epidemiology, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellowship
Britton Newman, Romance Languages, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow
Britton Newman

In May 2008 Britton defended his master’s thesis, which was on the presence and function of Russia in the novels and stories of the contemporary Cuban author Jose Manuel Prieto. Britton has received a one-year Graduate Teaching Assistantship that will take him to Seville, Spain for the 2008-09 school year, after which he will return to UNC to pursue his Ph.D. He participated in two conferences during 2007-2008, the annual Southern Comparative Literature Association conference and UNC's own Carolina Conference on Romance Literatures.

Edema Ojomo, Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Tammi Owens, Art History, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Tammi Owens

Tammi completed her master's thesis on Mithila painting in north India and successfully defended it this past year. She spent eight weeks at the South Asia Summer Language Institute (SASLI) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison taking a course on advanced Hindi. She received a foreign language area scholarship (FLAS) for full tuition plus a stipend to attend.

Yi Pan, Education, Mrs. Victor Humphreys Fellow

Yi is working on his dissertation and hopes to have it completed by August 2010. His dissertation topic will focus on early childhood resilience. Yi is interested in the successful developmental processes of young children and how they prosper in their lives despite great adversities they may experience. In addition to collecting dissertation research, Yi worked as a statistician at the Frank Porter Graham Child Research Institute, helping social science researchers develop an accessible strategy to conduct power analysis in mixed models. This past year Yi attended the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego, California, where he presented three papers based on his research. Yi also submitted a paper to be published in the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics. He is co-author on several other papers, one of which is titled, “Estimating the Effects of Racial Segregation on First-Grade Reading Gains”

Yi is also getting a masters’ degree in statistics and completed the necessary course work for this degree in the spring.

Jinhee Park, Nursing, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Ryan Peeks, History, Chancellor's Fellowship
Vanessa Pelletier, Music, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow

Vanessa specializes in Medieval and Renaissance music. She is especially intrigued by the intersection of performance practice with scholarship. In her work as a string player and singer with two early-music ensembles, she has engaged issues of notation, pronunciation of Medieval Latin and French texts, and tempo and tacti. Of particular note in her academic career are her two stylistic studies of the Medieval repertory — one, a 74-page work on Ambrosian and Gregorian Chant; the other a 131-page monograph on the motets of Guillaume de Machaut — all while studying as an undergraduate at Queens University as a Queen Elizabeth II Scholar. Vanessa’s first language is French, though she is fluent in English, German and Italian. She has a reading-level knowledge of Roman and Medieval Latin as well.

Nathan Pfeifer, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Nathan Pfeifer

Nathan’s first year in graduate school went well and he immersed himself in classes and research thanks to the support of the Royster Fellows program. During the summer he began a clinical research study. The study will investigate liver function with implications for various diseases such as hepatitis and cancer of the liver, as well as certain drug interactions that take place in the liver. “Without the support of the Royster Fellowship, there is no way I would already be underway with this study. As it is, I will likely be able to complete everything this summer and present the results shortly after. Thank you for your support!” he said.

Jason Priem, Information & Library Science, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Ashleigh Raabe, Art History, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow

This past fall Ashleigh taught Classical and Hellenistic Greek Art for the first time. “It was amazing,” she said. She looks forward to teaching it again the second summer session. In the meantime, Ashleigh has passed her written and oral Ph.D. exams and her prospectus defense and will now turn her attention to her dissertation on Roman wall painting.

Elizabeth Robinson, Classics, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow

This past year, Elizabeth served as the acting director for the Ancient World Mapping Center (AWMC) at UNC. In this position, she created several maps for use in scholarly publications on the ancient world, and oversaw a graduate student research assistant. Elizabeth also defended her dissertation prospectus, tentatively titled “Cultural Processes in Larinum from the fourth century BCE to the first century CE Amid Roman Expansion and the Spread of Hellenistic Culture.” She will travel to Larinum (modern Larino) on the eastern coast of the Italian peninsula to conduct her research. To assist with her travel expenses, Elizabeth applied for several grants and was awarded the Olivia James Traveling Fellowship from the AIA for 2009-2010 and a Fulbright Full Grant.

Elizabeth spent the summer working on the Gabii Project, an archaeological field project affiliated with the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, as a member of the topography team.

Jessica Rodriguez, Pathology, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellowship
Jessica Rodriguez
Norah Rosenberg, Epidemiology, John Motley Morehead Fellow
Norah Rosenberg

Over the past year, Norah has been working on several research projects assessing behavioral interventions for reducing risk of contracting or transmitting HIV. This summer she traveled and conducted research in Johannesburg, South Africa. She assessed the acceptability and feasibility of a behavioral intervention for high risk couples.

Kelly Ross, English and Comparative Literature, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Kelly Ross

Kelly was awarded a Frankel Dissertation Grant through the English and Comparative Literature Department for fall semester 2008. She was released from teaching for a semester to concentrate on her dissertation research. She also was awarded a Center for Historic American Visual Culture Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society to conduct research for a month in their archives in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was there this past summer and investigated the origins of literary detection in the United States. Kelly presented a paper at the American Comparative Literature Association convention in Boston, Massachusetts in April. She plans to defend her dissertation in May 2010.

Harmony Salzer, Genetics and Molecular Biology, Edwin A. Greenlaw Dissertation Fellowship

Harmony's work focuses on important but poorly understood questions in the structure of the cell nucleus. Her research will deconstruct the early stages of the cell processes which create histone protein. Histone proteins are essential for packaging DNA, determining gene function, and ensuring that the genome is faithfully transmitted to future generations of cells.

Eric Sanders, Speech & Hearing Sciences, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellowship
Eric Sanders
Lucia Seminario-Vidal, Cell and Molecular Physiology, William R. Kenan Fellow
Lucia Seminario-Vidal

Lucia was funded this past year by a grant from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. She applied for this grant for 2009-2010 and will be funded by it for another year. During the past year, Lucia published a paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry entitled “Thrombin promotes release of ATP from lung epithelial cells through coordinated activation of Rho- and Ca2+-dependent signaling pathways.” This paper illustrates that airway epithelial ATP release is regulated by intracellular calcium and Rho GTPases, and it occurs via plasma membrane connexin/pannexin hemichannels. She also presented her research at several conferences: the 22nd North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference in Orlando, Florida; the Annual Research Day of the Department of Cell and Molecular Physiology at UNC; and the Purines 2008 meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Lucia also made significant progress toward her dissertation research. She hopes her research will help to further understand ATP-mediated regulation of airway epithelial cell functions. Ultimately, she hopes it will provide novel targets for preventive and therapeutic interventions that will aid individuals with cystic fibrosis and other chronic lung diseases.

Fall 2008, she had the chance to see her knowledge and research on chronic lung diseases be put into practice. She rotated for three weeks with the pulmonary medical team at UNC and watched a patient with advanced cystic fibrosis speak without gasping for air after using a new device that promotes respiratory clearance. “The smile on her face and the epitome of ‘ATP in action’ put my research into perspective.”

Outside school, she volunteers at the Student Health Coalition’s clinics. She is also proud of the fact that while accomplishing everything here, she became a mom in November 2008.

Douglas Shadle, Music, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Douglas Shadle

During his fourth year as a Royster Fellow, Doug successfully defended his dissertation proposal, which examines American symphonies composed before the Civil War. He presented papers at conferences in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Boston, Massachusetts, and San Antonio, Texas. He also has a paper ready for publication in a forthcoming book on French composer Olivier Messiaen. In the summer of 2007, he spent a month doing research at the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the research he completed was published in Common-place, an online journal of early American history. Finally, in January of 2008, he married Karen Wicke, another Royster Fellow in the music department.

Karen Shadle (formerly Wicke), Music, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Karen Shadle

Karen is in the early stages of conducting research for her dissertation, which will explore sacred music in New England during the period of the American Revolution. She is planning research trips to Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City in the near future. In February, she attended the Society for American Music’s annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. As noted, Karen married Douglas Shadle, another Royster Fellow in the field of music in January.

Che Smith, Biostatistics, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Che Smith
James Smith, Nutrition, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow
James Smith

After treating and caring for a few thousand individual patients each year as an emergency physician, James came to the realization that, as stated by John M. Barry in The Great Influenza, public health “was and is where the largest numbers of lives are saved.” He decided to leave clinical care and attend graduate school at Carolina to pursue a doctoral degree in Nutrition. James possesses a strong interest in the prevention and treatment of obesity, and his research interest focuses on understanding the biological, behavioral and psychosocial factors that are associated with long-term weight maintenance. James earned an undergraduate degree in biology from UNC-Greensboro before obtaining an M.D. from Jefferson Medical College.

Tosha Smith, Nutrition, Chancellor's Fellowship
Gina Song, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chancellor's Fellowship
Danielle Spurlock, City and Regional Planning, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow

Danielle earned an undergraduate degree in human biology from Stanford University. After Stanford, Danielle came to Carolina, where she entered a dual master’s degree program in public health and city and regional planning, a three-year program that leads to master’s degrees in both fields. Beyond excelling in the program, she also spent her time as an active volunteer, co-chairing the Minority Health Conference entitled, Health and the Built Environment: The Effects of Where We Live, Work and Play. She was also a member of the diversity committee in the department of city and regional planning. After graduating this program in 2005, Danielle worked as a research associate and a project director at both the Center for Urban and Regional Studies and the Active Living by Design Program at UNC Chapel Hill. Danielle is pursuing a doctoral degree in city and regional planning in order to continue her investigation into the health effects of inequitable land-use patterns and historic discrimination using community-based participatory research methods.

Jeanette Stingone, Epidemiology, Joseph E. Pogue Fellowship
Jeanette Stingone
Florian Stoeckel, Political Science, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellowship
Tabb Sullivan, Microbiology & Immunology, John Motley Morehead Fellowship
Jonathan Sullivan
Daniel Taber, Epidemiology, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Daniel Taber

In 2008-09, Dan served as a teaching assistant for the class “Theory and Quantitative Methods in Epidemiology,” presented a poster at The Obesity Society Annual Meeting, published two first-author papers and co-authored two other papers, and completed his oral examination. As part of his oral exam, he presented his dissertation proposal to study state policies related to nutrition/physical education in schools. He will be looking at whether recent changes in such policies had an impact on student diet, physical activity levels, and obesity throughout the United States. He passed his oral exam in October and celebrated by traveling to South Africa. Now he’s making progress on his dissertation with the goal of graduating this year.

Anna (Freya) Thimsen, Communication Studies, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Anna (Freya) Thimsen

Freya reports her first year at UNC-Chapel Hill was exciting and challenging. Since she was not teaching, she was able to take four classes each semester instead of the usual three. This spring, she traveled to two conferences, the first was a conference on Rhetoric and Technology in Visual Communication at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, and the annual Social Theory Forum at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, Massachusetts. At each conference, she presented research on the practice of video-taping interrogations and confessions and its implications for contemporary visual technology as it relates to policing strategies and the extension of state power. She has not selected a final dissertation topic yet but is looking forward to working further in the fields of rhetoric and media studies.

Autumn Thoyre, Geography, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow

Autumn finished her first year of her doctoral program and is happy with her progress in both teaching and presenting. She also made strides in articulating her research interests. “Acquiring language to say this sort of thing has been a challenge!” she said, adding, “It’s been a great year for growth of this sort.”

Jennifer Tiitsman, Religious Studies, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow

This past fall Jenna co-taught a first-year Honors seminar with three University Fellows. With 22 very bright first year undergrads, she and her fellow teachers, a microiologist, an epidemiologist, and a fellow scholar of religion explored religion, morality and HIV/AIDS. She also published her first book chapter in Planetary Loves: Gayatri Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology. Her chapter titled, “Planetary Subjects after the Death of Geography” came out of a weekend-long conversation with postcolonial scholar Gayatri Spivak. She was also invited to review four books this year for two review essays. “Thank you so much for making all of these opportunities possible for me,” she said.

Hai Tran, Journalism & Mass Communication, William R. Kenan Jr. Fellowship
Hai Tran
Carmina Valle, Nutrition, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow
Carmina Valle

Carmina spent her second year as a Royster Fellow completing coursework for her Ph.D. in nutrition intervention and policy and a certificate in interdisciplinary health communication. During the spring semester, she served as a teaching assistant for a dietary change interventions course and completed her doctoral comprehensive exams. Carmina applied to and was awarded a one-year predoctoral fellowship appointment to the Cancer Control Education Program and the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, which begins in September 2009. Over the summer, she worked on research publications related to dietary and physical activity behaviors among cancer survivors and developed her dissertation proposal. With her dissertation research, Carmina hopes to elucidate the information seeking behaviors and behavioral needs of young adult cancer survivors to inform the development of health communication interventions that are acceptable and effective in this population.

Laura Wagner, Anthropology, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Fellow

Laura passed her comprehensive exams in April and is heading to Haiti this fall to conduct her research.

Roshawn Watson, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Jr. Fellow
Roshawn Watson

Shawn’s research explores genetic variants associated with chemotherapy resistance in metastatic colorectal cancer patients. During 2007-2008 he wrote an institutional review board application for a retrospective study in metastatic colorectal cancer patients and after a few modifications, it was approved. With the help of the hospital drug information division, he performed medical chart reviews on 140 patients, including both electronic records and paper charts dated back to 2004. He also searched medical records in storage and contacted several local oncologists to complete his database.

In his research project, Shawn genotypes the patients for known variants of certain genes with a technology called pyrosequencing. He found was that the patients had incidences of the variants that correlated to historical values for their patient population. Lastly, he assessed gene copy number status in normal samples. Certain genes are amplified and reduced, and there is data suggesting that this may correlate to chemotherapy resistance. Along with this, he is assessing gene copy number and correlating it the clinical outcomes assessed earlier.

Also during the 2007-2008 academic year, Shawn passed his qualifying exam and defended his dissertation proposal over the summer.

Traci Wike, Social Work, Lovick P. Corn Dissertation Fellowship

Traci’s work will evaluate the effectiveness of classroom-based, social skills intervention on aggressive behavior of children who use aggression to gain social prominence among peers. This study will address a timely and critical gap in our understanding of aggression in children. Her dissertation advisor sums it up saying, “It is rare that a dissertation holds such promise for addressing a problem that has the public policy currency of school violence.”

Jennifer Winston, Geography, Chancellor's Fellowship
Dana Wood, Psychology, William Neal Reynolds Fellow
Dana Wood

In 2007-2008 Dana completed and passed her comprehensive exam. She also co-authored three posters, “Educational Expectations and Delinquent Behaviors in Low-income, Urban Youth,” “Parents’ Expectations and Adolescents’ School Engagement in African American Families,” and “Sex and Race Differences in the Development of Gender Stereotypes” that were presented at the Society for Research on Adolescence Biennial Meeting in Chicago, Illinois.

In addition, Dana is working on a manuscript entitled “Differences in Expectations for Sons and Daughters in African American Families: The Role of Parents’ Academic Gender Stereotypes.” She is also serving as the graduate student representative on the legislative committee of the North Carolina Psychological Association.

Dana is now working on her dissertation proposal. She will examine predictors of college enrollment and performance for African American Youth.

Su Zhang, Geography, William Neal Reynolds Fellow
Su Zhang

Su is a doctoral student in Geography. His master’s thesis was titled “Estimating Forest Biomass Using the Integration of Lidar, Radar, and ETM+ Image.” His research interests include Lidar data used to estimate tree height, biomass, and other physical parameters in Duke Forest and this summer he did field work in Duke Forest to estimate the leaf area index.