Arts

With graduation only weeks away, senior biological sciences major Sarahann Yeh’s future looks even brighter since being awarded the 2016-17 Fulbright U.S. Student Grant. The Life Sciences alumna will use her award to teach English in Indonesia, assisting local English teachers. Yeh said that Scholars gave her the springboard she needed to get involved on campus. “Scholars enabled me to hit the ground running when I came to Maryland,” Yeh said. While in Indonesia, Yeh will also serve as a U.S. cultural ambassador while she volunteers, and she credits Scholars for helping her discover her excitement for cultural advocacy.

As a former Arts Scholars and past winner of the Martha and Ira Berlin Legacy Fund Scholarship, senior Emily Tuttle’s Scholars experience is even more meaningful since her scholarship win. Earning the scholarship provided Tuttle with the opportunity to study abroad in Ireland in a creative writing immersion class through the Department of Arts and Humanities. “This award supports students who have a well-defined, innovative project, who are committed to Scholars and to learning from diversity, and who have financial need,” Scholars Executive Director Dr. Marilee Lindemann said.

On March 31, the Cambridge Community will host the first-ever Me Too Monologues on the College Park campus. Me Too Monologues is a documentary theater performance about identity and all the issues that surround it. Students and faculty have been asked to anonymously submit stories about their experiences, and peers will perform their stories as monologues in a theatrical production. This is a national production that has been performed at colleges all over the country. Sophomore Life Sciences Scholar Maryam Ghaderi decided to propose that Scholars host this event after hearing about the Me Too Monologues from friends.

On Feb. 19, a group of seven College Park Scholars presented in the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center for the first-ever ScholarsNEXT event. ScholarsNEXT is a student-run event that provides students with an opportunity to share their ideas about solving real-world problems. Presenters had to register for a class, which met every other week for an hour. Sponsored by the UMD SGA and the Office of Undergraduate Studies, Ananth Srivatsan was able to make his dream a reality in founding this event. “These students are incredibly talented, and they have some, frankly, brilliant ideas,” Srivatsan, a Science, Technology and Society Scholar, said before introducing the first speaker, Public Leadership Scholar Aaron Pludwinski.

A group of five students from the Environment, Technology and Economy program are working to install water meters in North Campus residence hall showers to educate students about water usage and reduce their water consumption.  The Office of Sustainability awarded the team, known as Team Shower Power, a $4,260 grant to fund the project. "[The grant] is funding purchasing of the shower meters and purchasing of the materials for the educational campaign component,” said Jada Mosley, a sophomore English and environmental science and policy major. “So once we actually have data, we can tell them [students] what the shower meters are actually for and we can tell them how they can reduce their water use.”

His freshman year, Kofie Yeboah was tired of writing about college sports. He and his friends sought an outlet to write about sports without being boxed into a specific category. Their idea evolved into the award-winning blog The Left Bench.  Two years later, the blog has a staff of 30, more than 1,500 followers on Twitter and earned a Mobbie Award for Best College Sports Blog in 2014.  “The Mobbie Award was a huge confidence booster and the realization that we truly didn't know what we were capable of,” Yeboah said. “Before that, we didn't know how big and popular this thing could get so it was awesome to win that award.”