Honors

Anna has been involved in environmental issues since beginning her career at Denison and has continued on this path ever since. She spent two undergraduate summers working at the Argonne National Laboratories near Chicago, IL doing atmospheric measurements and analyses through the Global Change Education Program. While at Denison, she was a member of the Women’s Club Rugby and the Gospel Choir. She received her B.S. in Chemistry in 2004, after which she traveled to Vienna, Austria for one year under the auspices of a Fulbright Fellowship. She studied pollution reaction pathways in the atmosphere at the Vienna University of Technology via experimental work in the laboratory. Upon returning to the U.S., Anna attended the California Institute of Technology where she received her M.S. in 2007 in Environmental Science and Engineering. She currently resides at Caltech as a Doctoral Student and is also a Resident Associate for the undergrads. Her current research involves the transport and fate of toxic metals in seawater and a climate change project with deep-sea coral studies that took her on a research cruise in the Southern Ocean by way of Tasmania, Australia. In her free time, she deeply enjoys SCUBA diving around the Channel Islands near the coast of Southern California and skiing in the mountains!

Daniel Meyer (BA Music '94), Current Resident Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Music Director of the Asheville Symphony and Erie Philharmonic.  Daniel was a member of the Denison Singers, Concert Choir, and Welsh Hills Symphony as well as a DJ on WDUB during his years at Denison.  His senior honors project was writing and conducting a work for chorus and orchestra. 

I received a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship for study at the Vienna Music Academy in 1995-96.  I was able to apply either through my home Rotary Club (Medina, Ohio) or through the club associated with Denison (Columbus, OH).  I chose Denison's area club, and I attempted to make my application as unique and interesting as possible.  I applied in the winter of 1994 - the actual awarded scholarship does not take affect until a year and a half later!  I was already into my first year of graduate work at Univ. of Cincinnati before I knew that I had won the scholarship.  My advisor at Cincinnati was more than happy to make the year away feasible.

I wanted to study conducting in Vienna, and I made my dossier and application look as if all my study and interest leading up to the award was somehow related to this next step of studying abroad.  Beware: many applicants want to go to London or Australia, so the more "exotic" and the more unusual your request, the better chance you have of being awarded you first-choice location.  You must also demonstrate via test or letter from your foreign language teacher that you have proficiency in the language of your study country.  If not, you may have to take intensive language study several weeks before your academic year begins.

You do not have to follow a specific degree course in your award year - in fact - it's discouraged to attempt to get American university credit transferred back.  You are expected to absorb as much as you want, and you can develop your own course of study, if the host institution will allow it.  While in Vienna, I followed the regular course of a first year conducting student, and I actually got to conduct the student orchestra on at least 8 occasions over the course of the year.  I also attended many concerts and rehearsals, and bought standing-room tickets at the State Opera on nights when I didn't have a lot of studying to do.   

The only "payment" you owe the Rotary Foundation is that you give brief talks or presentations to your host club and a couple other Rotary Clubs upon your return.  This is actually a fun way to re-live your year abroad.  The award is generous, and is designed to cover your tuition and basic living expenses.  I highly recommend this scholarship to applicants who are well-spoken and have a clear conception of the interesting project or course of study they would like to accomplish in their year abroad.

Cora had been interested in becoming a physician since high school, but it was during college when she became more interested in studying global health issues. In the summer before her sophomore year she spent the summer working for an HIV prevention NGO in Tanzania. It was during her four months there that she began to appreciate the potential impact that the provision of basic health care can have upon individuals, families and ultimately a population. This is one of several experiences that led her to apply for the Truman Scholarship to pursue an MD and an MSc in Health, Community and Development at the London School of Economics. Her MSc focused on understanding health as a product of the social, psychological, cultural and economic aspects of a community; and how to create community programming that draws upon all these aspects to create change. The year was filled with meeting incredible people and vibrant discussions- with professors, as a part of lectures, with guest speakers, and with classmates a diversity of backgrounds and experience. She often remembers conversations that would continue on over a long coffee or pint! Currently, Cora is working as a Research Assistant at the Overseas Development Institute, a leading International Development Think-Tank in London, while she applies for medical school. Cora hopes to pursue a medical degree, combining a social science and medical approach to working with community health in developing country contexts.

Early in her Denison career, Julianne realized how precious and unique the Denison community was in challenging and fostering thoughtful, well-rounded, and motivated students. She applied the supportive network of professors, staff, and talented students toward community service projects such as HOPE for Autism and the Brain Bee, as well as campus organizations like Sustained Dialogue and the OΔK Leadership honorary. Numerous high school and summer internships in neuroscience research laboratories at Stanford, the University of California, San Diego, the Cleveland Clinic, and Denison helped her to choose an academic path in neurobiology, even if that meant she had to create the major. Initially inspired by experiences with her neurologically challenged younger sister, Julianne’s marked curiosity about her sister’s conditions eventually translated into a career goal in neural plasticity and regeneration research. The combination of academic ambition and a desire to benefit the community through volunteerism and activism resulted in a year in Sweden on a Fulbright research grant following graduation. The time in Sweden was spent exploring molecular therapeutics for blindness, meeting ambassadors and diplomats, and experiencing the culture through participation as a member of community and university volunteer, musical, language, sports, and art organizations. Somewhere in between the research and activities, she also managed to step foot in over 25 countries during the year! She was able to extend her stay in Sweden under the auspices of an EU RetNet fellowship to continue her research. Julianne is now a PhD student at UCSD where she is studying adult neurogenesis and brain plasticity as part of the Biomedical Sciences program while also finding the time to organize several nonprofit educational opportunities for youth in San Diego, including another local Brain Bee. "Denison proved that involvements in many different areas could be as fruitful and profound as they were well-rounded: there was never a decision between focus and variety."

The Congress Bundestag Exchange Program represents the culmination of the last twelve years, from when I lived in Germany to my challenging and enjoyable time at Denison. The program allows me to revisit Germany with a greater appreciation for and understanding of the cultural subtleties and differences one encounters when living overseas. Additionally, I have the opportunity to combine my academic and professional interests by studying at a German university for four months and by working in a government-related internship for the remaining eight. I am extremely excited to have this opportunity to not only represent Denison but also my country in my studies and internship abroad.

During the summer following her first year at Denison, Mary Ann (B.A. '06) worked as a volunteer teacher in rural northern Thailand, in a school where four languages and a variety of nationalities merged. Returning to Denison, she wove an interest in language issues and education into her two majors, International Studies and English Literature. In founding the recruitment campaign for Teach For America at Denison, she supplemented her interest in international educational issues with a concern for the educational challenges facing the United States. Drawing from her background in Ohio's Amish community and her fluency in German, she also created an interdisciplinary Honors senior research project on language and identity in Amish schools. Delving into interviews with educators in this unique linguistic minority led to her interest in applying for a Fulbright Research Grant to Switzerland for 2007-2008.

When she had studied abroad in Giessen, Germany during the spring semester of her junior year, she investigated potential spots for further research on the historical context of Amish separatism. Identifying Bern, Switzerland as a key location during the emergence of the Amish from the Anabaptist movement, she prepared a proposal highlighting the need to study Amish educational and separatist practices in their historical context.

Her time in Bern coincided with a "Year of Anabaptism" which sought to bring the history of this religious minority into Swiss public dialogue. During the year, Mary Ann was able to share her current and past research, as well as her personal reflections on America's Amish communities, which fascinated the local media and led to a number of newspaper articles about the young American who grew up speaking a hybrid Swiss German language in the US. Appreciating the Fulbright Foundation's goal of fostering mutual understanding between countries, Mary Ann also wrote a weekly column about her research and her exploration of Switzerland for The Budget, a US newspaper with a national subscription among historically Amish and Anabaptist communities. Upon her return, a collection of the columns was published in CH is for Chocolate: Individually Wrapped Tastes of Switzerland. She spent her free time practicing Bernese Swiss German with anyone who would tolerate her efforts, training for a marathon, and hiking in the spectacular Bernese Alps.