Shortly before Christmas in 1962, a letter arrived at the White House from Moscow. "Dear Mr. President," it began.

"It seems to me…that time has come now to put an end once and for all to nuclear tests, to draw a line through such tests."

The letter was signed, "Sincerely, N. Khrushchev." In this crucial piece of Cold War correspondence, the Soviet Premier indicated that his nation was willing to move toward a more stable relationship with the West.

Seven months later, President John F. Kennedy delivered the speech, "A Strategy of Peace," at American University. He called for a nuclear test ban treaty, which would suspend all atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

WATCH: Videos of the 50th Anniversary of JFK's Speech at AU

Kennedy spoke loftily of peace, both securing and building it — "not merely peace in our time but peace for all time," he said. It was a clarion call to all nations to abandon nuclear strategies in favor of peace.

The speech, delivered at AU’s 49th Commencement on June 10, 1963, and written by Kennedy’s primary speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, is known as one of Kennedy’s finest orations. 

Fifty years later, the speech still resonates both for its unabashed desire for peace and its unequivocal condemnation of war.

The legacy of the speech is evident today in the country’s current nuclear policies and efforts to reduce the world’s nuclear stockpile.

A 'Bold' and 'Unusual' Speech

For 13 tense days in October 1962, the United States found itself at the brink of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought into sharp focus just how serious the threat was.

"The two leaders — Kennedy and Khrushchev — looked into the abyss and managed to avoid nuclear war," said School of International Service Dean James Goldgeier. "It was a pretty scary time."

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy resolved to prevent something like that from happening again. A nuclear test ban treaty seemed a good place to start.

Kennedy revealed his agenda for the speech to few members of his administration for fear of a backlash. Striking a conciliatory tone with the Soviets would have been viewed as weak in many Washington quarters.

Once Kennedy had the idea for the speech, he needed a venue. He was not originally scheduled to be AU’s commencement speaker that year, recalled Anthony Morella, former dean of the Washington College of Law, who served as WCL Marshall in 1963. 

MORE: Recommended Books, Films On The JFK Era

Pauline Frederick, a groundbreaking journalist and AU alumna, was scheduled to speak, but graciously stepped aside, Morella said, when it was learned that Kennedy was interested in AU as a location.

After arriving on campus by helicopter from the White House, Kennedy spoke passionately for nearly 27 minutes about peace and the ways to achieve it. It was an "unusual" speech, said School of Communication Adjunct Professor Robert Lehrman.

"Usually in a speech, the writing isn’t that great. It’s just a series of great moments or memorable lines," Lehrman said, a former speechwriter.

Kennedy’s American University speech was more than just a series of memorable lines. The writing was crisp, it expressed a view that was insightful, and it was hugely influential, all qualities of an exceptional speech, Lehrman said.

The speech, which Kennedy and Sorenson finished reviewing and editing on a plane ride back from Hawaii that day, made use of a number of literary devices. It employed alliteration, antithesis, and repetition, none of which were common at the time in political speeches, Lehrman said.

While the literary devices used in the speech were unique, the message was what made it shine. Rather than demonizing the Soviets, he reminded Americans of what they endured during World War II. He encouraged the American public to feel some sense of empathy toward their enemy. And he implored the nation to move forward.

It was no wonder he kept the contents of the speech from all but his closest advisors.

"It was a bold move by Kennedy to give that speech," said School of Public Affairs Distinguished Professor James Thurber. "The hawks did not like the speech, but it showed great leadership to make the world a safer place."

School of Communications Professor Dotty Lynch remembers watching the speech as a young teenager.

"It put AU on the map," she said. "It made the school stand out as a place of leadership."

Kennedy’s Influence Today

The legacy of Kennedy’s speech at AU cannot be underestimated. The détente policy, developed during the Cold War to help ease tensions in U.S.-Soviet relations, was a direct outgrowth of the speech, Goldgeier said. That policy lasted until the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in 1979.  

"There was generally a notion that even though the Soviets were our adversaries, we would reach out to them," Goldgeier said.

FACTS: Did You KNOW? JFK At AU By The Numbers

Over the years, the United States has continued to push for a worldwide reduction in nuclear arms. President Bill Clinton tried, albeit unsuccessfully to put a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty in place. It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1996, but has yet to be fully ratified. The United States remains one of the few holdouts.

Still, President Barack Obama is taking nuclear arms reduction seriously. In 2010, he and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. In his latest State of the Union address, Obama spoke of nuclear disarmament.

"We will engage Russia to seek further reductions in our nuclear arsenals, and continue leading the global effort to secure nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands — because our ability to influence others depends on our willingness to lead," Obama said.

On May 23, Obama called on the nation to reexamine the fight against terrorism, outlining plans for tighter rules for drone strikes and renewed plans to close Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. 

"This war, like all wars, must end," Obama said. "That's what history advises. That's what our democracy demands."

MORE: How JFK's 1963 Speech Compares with Obama's Counter Terrorism Speech

A direct thread runs from Kennedy’s speech through Obama’s agenda for nuclear arms. While the U.S. still has enough nuclear weapons to cause major damage, the reductions in recent years have been steep. That takes real leadership, said Thurber, and it started with Kennedy.

"Despite what had transpired prior to the speech, Kennedy was still willing to reach out and work with the Soviets to reduce nuclear testing and weapon development and that’s important historically and it’s impressive," Thurber said. "This is all a part of the Kennedy legacy to reduce the number of weapons and increase peace in the world."

Originally published on March 5, 2013

This year the College of Arts and Sciences was honored to feature as its commencement speaker Dr. Paul Farmer, internationally renowned global health advocate, medical anthropologist, cofounder of Partners In Health, and chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also serves as U.N. Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community-based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti. In this essay, Professor David Vine, who teaches in the College’s Department of Anthropology, describes Farmer’s lasting influence and inspiration to anthropologists.

Although Paul Farmer’s many accomplishments as a doctor sometimes obscure his training as a medical anthropologist, he is easily the most publically influential anthropologist since Margaret Mead and her mentor, the “founding father” of U.S. anthropology, Franz Boas. For more than two decades, Farmer has inspired a generation of anthropologists, from undergraduate and graduate students to faculty members (like me), among the thousands of others whose lives he has influenced. 

At the core of Farmer’s anthropology, as well as his skills as a doctor and public health worker, is his commitment to seeing the world from the perspective of the planet’s poorest. Unlike many doctors (and anthropologists for that matter), Farmer has lived for decades with his patients, first in Haiti and later in communities from Rwanda to impoverished neighborhoods in Boston. “It took me a relatively short time in Haiti,” Farmer writes of the beginnings of his career in his 2003 book Pathologies of Power, “to discover that I could never serve as a dispassionate reporter or chronicler of misery. I am only on the side of the destitute sick and have never sought to represent myself as some sort of neutral party.” 

Out of this experience witnessing poverty and the sickness it inflicts, Farmer’s work is unflinchingly committed to social justice, global equity, and the idea that health care is a human right, beginning with what he calls “the most basic right . . . to survive.” Like his medicine, Farmer’s anthropology is thus an anthropology in service to the poor. Importantly, this does not mean an anthropology of the poor. Farmer is well aware that “writing of the plight of the oppressed is not a particularly effective way of assisting them.” After all, anything one might say is likely to be used against them. Instead, Farmer is interested in studying and exposing the “processes and forces that conspire” to constrain the agency of the poor and that cause poverty, disease, and suffering.  

This interest in the root causes of poverty and the diseases Farmer treats as a physician has led to one of Farmer’s greatest intellectual contributions—his analysis of “structural violence.” Drawing on the work of Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, Farmer calls attention to powerful forms of everyday violence, like poverty, hunger, and poor health, that can be just as deadly as the violence of bullets and war but that tends to be caused by social forces, political and economic institutions, and the decisions of policymakers. In the paradigmatic example Farmer uses to explain structural violence, he shows how the root causes of a Haitian contracting HIV/AIDS are to be found not in personal irresponsibility but in the displacement of a village by a dam planned and funded by powerful actors in Washington, D.C.; by the impoverishment the dam created; and by the long-term impoverishment of Haiti through centuries of subjugation at the hands of the United States and European powers dating to the days of slavery.  

Despite this structural perspective, Farmer is by no means uninterested in the experience of individuals. To the contrary, his work as both an anthropologist and a physician revolves around the lives of individuals suffering amid powerful structural forces. Farmer’s anthropology is a holistic science involving many of the social and natural sciences: He combines an empathetic understanding of people’s lived experience and how people make meaning in their lives with a political, economic, and historical analysis of the large-scale forces that shape individual lives. Coupled with an appreciation for the biological vectors of disease causation, Farmer’s is a bio-sociocultural-political-economic-historical anthropology.  

As important as these unusual intellectual contributions have been, Farmer’s influence stems equally from his tireless commitment to creating positive social change and to using his anthropological and medical skills to help improve the lives of the poor. (When told he should spend more time with his wife and child in Paris, Farmer responded, “But I don’t have any patients there.”) Critically, for all the talk of “Saint Paul,” Farmer’s vision is not one of an outside savior delivering the poor from destitution. Instead, Farmer and Partners In Health, the organization he helped found with Ophelia Dahl (now its executive director) and Jim Yong Kim (now president of the World Bank), emphasize working in solidarity with those they serve; training Haitians and others to become doctors, nurses, and community health care workers; and building sustainable health care infrastructures designed to be part of public health care systems. 

In his 2003 biography of Farmer, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder described some of the profound impact Partners in Health and its Haitian counterpart organization Zanmi Lasante have had in what is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere: 

Zanmi Lasante had built schools and houses and communal sanitation and water systems throughout its catchment area [in central Haiti]. It had vaccinated all the children, and had greatly reduced both local malnutrition and infant mortality. It had launched programs for women’s literacy and for the prevention of AIDS, and in its catchment area had reduced the rate of HIV transmission from mothers to babies to 4 percent—about half the current rate in the United States. A few years back, when Haiti had suffered an outbreak of typhoid resistant to the drugs usually used to treat it, Zanmi Lasante had imported an effective but expensive antibiotic, cleaned up the local water supplies, and stopped the outbreak throughout the central plateau. In Haiti, tuberculosis still killed more adults than any other disease, but no one in Zanmi Lasante’s catchment area had died from it since 1988.

A decade later, Partners in Health (PIH) has accomplished far more. PIH now serves some 2.4 million people in 12 countries, in settings that include post-genocide Rwanda, Peruvian slums, and Russia’s prisons. In devastated post-earthquake Haiti, PIH recently inaugurated a 300-bed, state-of-the-art, solar-powered university teaching hospital that represents the country’s largest post-earthquake reconstruction project.  

There is perhaps no better symbol of PIH’s and Farmer’s commitment to providing the highest quality health care to the poorest of the poor than a world-class university hospital in a part of Haiti that doesn’t even have a university. In building the hospital and throughout their work, PIH and Farmer reject conventional public health wisdom about what’s “possible” in the provision of health care in impoverished settings. They reject arguments that treatments available in wealthy countries like the United States aren’t “cost effective” in settings like Haiti. Guided by the radical idea that all human lives are equal, that PIH should provide the same quality of care to the poor that the wealthy want for their own family members, that health care is a human right, PIH and Farmer demand nothing less than a “preferential option for the poor.” 

“That goal is nothing less than the refashioning of our world into one in which no one starves, drinks impure water, lives in fear of the powerful and violent, or dies ill and unattended,” Farmer says in an National Public Radio “This I Believe” essay. 

“Of course such a world is a utopia,” Farmer continues, “and most of us know that we live in a dystopia. But all of us carry somewhere within us the belief that moving away from dystopia moves us towards something better and more humane. I still believe this.” 

Farmer and all those he has worked with at PIH have made many of us believe. Like his anthropological ancestors Mead and Boas, Farmer has inspired anthropologists and others like me in both our heads and our hearts. He has created an anthropology in service to the poor, the sick, and those on the underside of the globe’s inequities. And in the process, he has forced anthropologists to confront a question posed by Mexican anthropologist Rosalva Hernández Castillo that we should ask of all our disciplinary affiliations: In a world of tremendous inequality, in a world that is both “satisfying to us” and “utterly devastating to them,” in a world of such suffering, “¿Antropología para que?” 

What’s anthropology for?

Ryan Englekirk knows about umpires. After all, he used to be one. Maybe that’s why the PhD candidate in AU’s History Department is sympathetic to their plight. 

After leaving umpiring, he returned to school in 2007 and earned his BA in history from AU in 2009. Due to his love of public history and the admiration and respect he had for his faculty mentors, he decided to continue his education and was accepted into the PhD program. During all that time, though, Englekirk’s interest in baseball never waned. He maintained friendships with other umpires he had learned from and worked beside for years at the semi-pro and youth levels. 

And for years he has been gathering information and oral histories on umpiring. He hopes his paper, "'Kill the Ump!': The Growth and Decline of the Major League Umpire’s Waistline 1970–2012," will generate conversation around umpire’s health and safety. He presented the paper at this year’s Robyn Rafferty Mathias Student Research Conference and walked away with the Professional Presentations Prize, which will cover his expenses at a professional peer reviewed national conference at which he is presenting the paper. 

"There is a lack of literature in the field," says Englekirk. "Most scholars have ignored the umpires."

His paper, part of a larger project to examine the ways the profession is changing, looks at training and labor conditions for umpires over the past three decades. 

Downsizing Umps 

One of the most obvious ways umpires have changed is pretty basic: they’ve gotten smaller.  

Englekirk believes the death of John McSherry from a heart attack on opening day 1996 shocked baseball to the point where it allowed the era of the large umpire to go by the wayside. This in turn changed how umpires settled physical disputes on the field and challenged previous notions of masculinity within the professional umpire community. 

In addition, social media, money, the web, and modernization of the game are changing the way we think about baseball and the roles umpires have in the game. "Now the Internet has allowed you to follow all the games and has opened the world to see umpire mistakes," he says. Umpires today are under more pressure from fans and the media. The enhanced coverage from social networks lets fans see their mistakes and often leads to increased ridicule of their profession. After all, any call is easy to make when you can look at it in slow motion, from 10 different angles, and rewind it 100 times. On the other hand, as Englekirk points out, "umpires have three-eighths of a second from the time the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand to when it hits the catcher’s glove to make a call." Englekirk hopes this paper will go beyond the "stereotype of the blind, obese idiot who needs a phone book to make the right call: These are people, this is a serious profession, and [umpires] take their profession very seriously," he says. 

Digging for Sources 

With so little academic information out there on the profession of umpiring, Englekirk had to put in a lot of effort to gather sources. 

"I draw upon interviews with minor and major league umpires, memoirs, newspapers, archival film, memoirs, and some journalistic works," he says. Drawing upon his personal experience and networks, Englekirk brings his readers a unique take on umpiring. "My biggest challenge has been finding where umpiring fits within the larger scholarly historical debate."

The former umpire says that although the history of umpiring is not his academic specialty (his dissertation is about the influence of the free-speech movement on the rights of high school students in the 1970s and 1980s), researching the topic has sharpened his focus as a historian. "Engaging myself in this subject has made me realize why I came back to school," he says. 

And he hopes it will open people’s eyes to the umpiring profession so that the next time they see an umpire "kick a call" they will have a little sympathy for the men in blue.

Artists never decide to be an artist because of the money. The “starving artist” motif is an accurate, if overused, stereotype. However, some artists are lucky enough to find someone who shares their passion and can afford to fund that passion. 

Such is the case for Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi MFA ‘11. The decorated D.C.-area painter, who has returned to AU as a professional lecturer, found her patron recently. 

Ilchi immigrated to the United States from Iran at the age of 18 and found culture shock and isolation in her new environment. “The language barrier was very difficult,” Ilchi says, “but it drove me more towards visual arts, and that enabled me to express myself freely. Art made me feel understood! In retrospect, despite its difficulties and bitterness, being separated from my motherland made me more curious and aware of my cultural heritage.” 

Her work illustrates this connection with her native culture. Her previous body of work portrays surreal images of women with long, wild hair. This depiction, Ilchi says, is a reference to herself and her issues as an Iranian immigrant. 

“The use of disproportionately long hair is a statement on the notion of freedom in relation to the oppressive and mandated use of head coverings for women in Iran,” she explains. “These female figures are central to my work since they portray a narrative of defiance in a cultural confrontation with tradition. They evoke a sense of resilience and that is a true reflection of how many Iranian women fight the daily battles.” 

Since her graduation from AU, Ilchi has received the support of many local collectors. She recently met Blake Kimbrough, the man who would be her most recent patron and collector, when Contemporary Wing’s Lauren Gentile introduced him to her work. He immediately fell in love with her use of Islamic themes and her use of abstract colors. Kimbrough explains his attraction to Ilchi’s art: “Since my academic pursuits dealt with the Near East and I am a Baha’i, a religion that comes from Persia, I have always been fascinated with how contemporary artists of Persian heritage express themselves given the oppression they may feel and their government’s attitude towards Western modernity. Since typically what is appreciated and celebrated in the arts is the concept of innovation, how would Persians abroad or at home interpret or respond to the desire to innovate or sensationalize in a global market place? I find Ilchi’s approach nuanced and compelling.” 

Ilchi’s and Kimbrough’s first conversation revolved around a work that he later purchased. Ilchi saw right away that he had a deep understanding of her culture and her inspirations as an artist. 

“Even though this is a new friendship, because of our backgrounds, I have a sense that this relationship will continue to grow,” she muses. “We are already planning a studio visit in the near future to have a deeper dialogue about my work. My paintings are hybrids of the two cultures with a fusion of Eastern and Western visual languages. The result is a paradoxical sense of chaos and order, which I think is one of the reasons that draws Blake to my work.” 

Hedieh Ilchi is currently participating in a group show, Social Construction, which opened April 10 and runs through June 9 at the Arlington Arts Center. She will have a solo exhibit, A leaf from my rose garden, curated by Steven Matijcio, at the Southern Center for Contemporary art in Winston-Salem, NC. Later this summer, she will show at Scope Art Fair in Basel, Switzerland.

Ilchi has received multiple awards, including The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards Semi-Finalist, The Bethesda Painting Awards Finalist, and The eighth annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize semifinalist. 

She will also participate in Nostalgia Structures at the Brentwood Arts Exchange, Brentwood, Maryland, in mid-July. For more information on Ilchi, and to see examples of her current work, visit her website.

College of Arts and Sciences’ alum Kathy Patalsky has always had a passion for food. Majoring in health promotion management, she went on to graduate from American University in 2005.

As with many American University students, her original intent was to use her degree in policy, but with the encouragement of her husband, who recognized her passion for photography, cooking, and writing, she went into business for herself and started a food blog.

“It took a good two years to realize my blog had a chance to be successful,” says Patalsky. “In the past year and a half I have seen my number of fans and traffic skyrocket.”

Today, Patalsky’s Healthy. Happy. Life. has become a very successful blog which, as of February 2013, receives more than 1,800,000 page views every 30 days. Her blog is a collection of recipes, articles, and fun photos all centered on vegan diet and health.

“Most of my readers aren’t even vegan. I make my recipes appeal to everyone and, although my fan base is mostly women, there are guys who shared a lot of enthusiasm.”

The popularity of Patalsky’s blog follows today’s growing health awareness, a trend she hopes will continue.

“People are getting excited about their health and diet,” says Patalsky.

This interest in vegan and healthy eating is not just limited to Americans, either. “My blog has gained a lot of international traffic,” says Patalsky.

The success of the past two years has surprised her. When Patalsky first started blogging, she had no real experience and no idea it would ever be so successful.

Patalsky’s enthusiasm for photography and food shows in her blog. Each recipe on her blog is accompanied by a photo. And while blogging has become popular in recent years, she remembers that when she first started there were few bloggers to draw inspiration from. This meant she needed to show a lot of creativity and commitment.

When asked about any fears or worries she had about going into business for herself she was quick to answer: “I just kind of went for it and started writing.”

Patalsky did no advertising campaigns to promote her blog; rather, through word of mouth and through hard work and many hours spent in the kitchen she has grown her blog to what it is today.

Patalsky hopes her recipes will inspire people and get them into the kitchen. She brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm to her blog, posting numerous photos. She adds that although her work is centered on cooking and writing, her background in nutrition is essential to her work. It allows her to add layers of knowledge to what she is writing, and it validates her recipes. Her real hope for the blog is that it will encourage and inform people on the importance of eating healthful food and living an active life.

Her passion for vegan recipes is not only for health reasons but because of her “passionate love of animals.”  She worked at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo all through her college years at AU.

In addition to her blog, Patalsky also writes for other websites such as Babble.com, and she has launched a second website, FindingVegan.com that has become very successful. Patalsky is the author of 365 Vegan Smoothies, which will be published by Penguin Group/Avery on June 4.

Addressing the 590 graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences at this year’s commencement ceremony on May 11, Dr. Paul Farmer did what he has done his whole life: surprise and inspire people.

The surprise for many hearing the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award winner and internationally renowned public health advocate was that he avoided the traditional platitudes about graduates embarking on a new chapter in their lives. Instead, he told a “tale of two cities”: Boston and Mirebalais, which is in central Haiti.

“If anyone embodies the American University ideal of active citizenship it is Paul Farmer,” said Peter Starr, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “He has devoted his entire career to helping people in some of the poorest places in the world get the kind of health care they not only need but deserve.”

Farmer is chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also serves as U.N. Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community-based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti.

He is perhaps best known as the cofounder of Partners In Health, an international nonprofit organization whose main goals are “to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need of them and to serve as an antidote to despair.” He received an honorary doctor of science degree at commencement.

Tale of Two Cities

In his tale of two cities, Farmer started with Boston, home to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, social where Farmer is chief of the Division of Global Health Equity. In nearby Cambridge is Harvard Medical School, where he teaches and started his medical studies 30 years ago.

In Boston, after two bombs exploded near the finish line of the city’s marathon, Farmer noted, a safety net of world-class hospitals and highly trained physicians and caregivers sprang into action. Three people died and more than 260 were injured. But not a single patient who reached the hospital alive died, even though many had suffered massive trauma. Doctors began operating on the injured within half an hour of the blast.

The system worked.

Compare that with Mirebalais, one of the poorest places in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. That’s where Farmer has chosen to live and to help the people who need his help the most.

Farmer first visited Mirebalais in 1983, after he had graduated from Duke and was about to enter Harvard Medical School. In the first few years of conducting health surveys in Haiti, he recounted, he’d lost three close fellow workers in ways that would have been unimaginable in Boston. One died of misdiagnosed cerebral malaria, another from typhoid fever complicated by an ileal perforation, and a third of sepsis caused by infection just days after giving birth to a boy. Her death could have been avoided by the kind of hygiene practiced routinely in hospitals in places like Boston.

Farmer’s conclusion was a fitting charge to the Class of 2013.

“Martin Luther King was right when he told us the year before his death by martyrdom that anyone can be great because everyone can serve. All of us can serve by helping to build or support the safety nets our species needs.” Not everyone can survive devastating disease or disasters, he said. “But how many survive serious illness or injury depends heavily on what sort of safety net we build for all those who share our neighborhoods, cities, states, nations, planet.”

Samantha Amberg, CAS ’13, is one of few American University students to have worked in an operating room as an undergraduate.

Amberg, a biology major in the College of Arts and Sciences, found out about an internship opportunity at DaVinci Plastic Surgery during her junior year and couldn’t pass it up.

Though most of her time at DaVinci was spent tracking supply inventories and maintaining medical records, for Amberg, watching and assisting with surgeries was the most valuable part of her experience.

During operations, she prepared surgical tools and materials, scribed and kept track of the time, and served as a general assistant for physicians—tasks most medical students don’t get to do until their second or third year of medical school.

Amberg quickly learned that a day in the operating room can be quite stressful, typically starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 5 p.m.

"Being in the operating room is like running a very stressful marathon," Amberg said. "The first few times I assisted with surgery, it was a deer-in-headlights situation. But I learned quickly and eventually was able to be of greater help to the team, while also learning how to deal with this crazy schedule."

American University is known for fostering an environment that promotes active internships like Amberg’s. The class of 2012 set a new school record, with 88 percent of students completing at least one internship before graduation. 

Like Amberg, they’re not all interning in fields like politics, international service, and communications—traditional strengths of AU. They’re interning in all corners and sectors of Washington, D.C.

"Internships help [students in smaller programs] achieve professional goals in the same manner as any other student by adding specific skills and accomplishments that supplement in the classroom experience," said Sue Gordon, director of career development in the Career Center.

When Maria Schneider, CAS ’13, tells people she majors in American Studies, the first questions she has to answer are "What’s that?" and "What do you want to do with that?"

Luckily, Schneider has a response for both questions. Throughout her coursework, she has focused on education reform, specializing in programs for disadvantaged youth. To supplement her studies, she currently interns at City Kids Wilderness Project, a nonprofit that focuses on outdoor education and leadership for D.C. middle and high school students.

As part of her internship, Schneider organizes weekend retreats that focus on topics like diversity and social justice with the students.

"Most people don’t even think of something like this as a possibility for an internship," Schneider said. "I think it’s important that students know that there are opportunities in D.C. to satisfy every possible interest."

Schneider’s work with City Kids reminds her every day why she is pursuing a career in the education field. Her internship has also helped her land a job teaching middle school Spanish in New Orleans through Teach for America following graduation in May.

"Through internships, students hone their skills and capabilities to build a strong resume and become a more competitive job applicant," Gordon said.

Swathi Nuli, CAS/SPA ’14, is taking advantage of another D.C. institution—the National Institutes of Health. Like Amberg, she interns in the science field, but their internships and long-term goals couldn’t be more different.

Nuli, a pre-med student majoring in psychology and justice/law, interns at NIH’s Institute of Allergens and Infectious Diseases. At NIH, Nuli helps proofread manuscripts from around the world, creates visuals for scientific publications, and assists with HIV research.

"My job [at NIH] has been one of the most influential opportunities I have had as a pre-medical student at AU," Nuli said. "I think a lot of political science and School of International Service majors at AU come to D.C. to work with the top politicians in the world, and I feel similarly fortunate to be working with the top scientists."

Nuli said that her NIH experience inspired her to bring a chapter of Phi Delta Epsilon, an international medical fraternity, to AU. She points to engaging and helpful mentors as the most important resource for pre-med students. 

Nuli will be extending her HIV work by volunteering in South Africa this summer and said she hopes to stay in this field for the long run.

Amberg, on the other hand, decided to pursue a new field after her time with the plastic surgeons. After interacting with patients and hearing their individual stories, Amberg discovered that her true passion is in psychology. She is grateful for her internship experience and the fact that it gave her a clearer vision of her future goals.

"My time at DaVinci has given me so much more than another bullet on my resume," Amberg said. "I’ve gained plenty of practical skills, but my most valuable takeaways are intangible: how to behave in a professional environment, how to interact with clients, and how much I can accomplish if I push myself."

One day, Stephen Casey was sitting at his kitchen table while his teenaged daughter and her 11 friends sat in a different room, chatting away and using their cellphones.

“I was thinking that there’s no way, with the way that we think about communication, that we’ll keep up with that generation,” the mathematics and statistics professor said. “Because what happens is that they talk in these incredibly rapid bursts of communication. It is also rich, multilayered communication.” 

Casey said this “art” of allowing information to be communicated electronically is called signal processing. 

“I was sitting at the kitchen table, in essence hiding. I was the adult in charge at this time, and I was trying to let them do their thing and just trying to remain invisible,” he added, “while thinking about this signal processing innovation.”  

What resulted from that day was an idea that led to a $145,537 award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for a three-year project called “New Techniques in Time Frequency Analysis: Adaptive Band, Ultra Band and Multi-Rate Signal Processing,” which led to an invention that now has a pending patent. 

“My invention is to take blocks of the signal and project that into what is called frequency space,” he said. “The method that I invented is called the projection method.” 

Casey already has two provisional patents for this method and said he is currently under review for a full patent.  

When he applied for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research award, he described all the different ways his method could provide solutions for the different problems the Air Force works on.  

“One is a very interesting phenomenon called ultra wide band communication,” Casey said. “This came about because of high-level radar and sonar signal processing, which obviously the Air Force is interested in.” 

Casey explained ultra wide band communication through a civilian use, referring to the earthquake that shook the Washington, D.C., area in the late summer of 2011. 

“We noticed that the first thing to go down was cellphone networks,” he said. “So the projection method actually solves the post-earthquake communication problem. Because if we communicated with our cellphones via ultra wide ban communication and used the projection method, we could layer the communications in hierarchy so that the low-level communication would get through.”  

Casey said text messages would go through first, followed by voice messages, then followed by video uploads or Facebook statuses about where a person was when the earthquake happened. The projection method is also energy efficient, Casey said, because when there is less complicated communication, it operates more efficiently and at lower energy levels. In the three years that Casey has to work on his idea with the award money, he said he will continue to write papers and think about a few other ideas that branch off of his projection method.

“I am amazed at how useful and how interesting mathematics is,” he said. “Even though I’ve been teaching for 25 years, I still feel like a student. I’m just very excited and enthused by the wonderful collection of things I get to work on, and I am thankful for having the opportunity to teach the great students we have in the AU Mathematics and Statistics Department.”

Presenting a semester's worth of work in front of your professor and classmates is stressful enough, but add in a real client and it's a different ball game entirely. That's exactly what students faced in Assistant Professor Cristel Russell's Advertising and Promotion Campaigns class.

The Concept

Student teams worked with one of two clients—the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) or media start-up SocialRadar—to develop a strategic campaign designed to meet the client's needs.

"I think it was a really great experience for the students to work with real clients on a real campaign. There's so much more to learn than what can just be read in textbooks," said Russell.

For SocialRadar, teams worked to develop a traditional launch campaign of a new smartphone app. But for CSPI, the challenge was to develop a campaign to encourage consumers to demand less marketing of unhealthy foods aimed at children.

Working on the same project throughout the semester gave students the opportunity to tie together principles learned across the marketing curriculum, according to Russell. Despite seeming like apples and oranges on the surface, marketing an idea versus a traditional product required the same steps in the end.

"Some of the students struggled a bit in the beginning…but once they realized the same principles applied, you could really see the lights in their eyes as they started coming up with ideas."

More Than Homework

From the student perspective, they were able to take away even more from Russell's class—now they have tangible evidence of their abilities.

"It was incredible to have a real client and do real work, not just deal in hypotheticals," said Kristianna George, BSBA '13. "It's been really helpful when I've applied to jobs because I have this project to hand over and say 'Here, I did this,' and it's exactly what I gave [my client.]"

Working with real clients also allowed students to overcome difficulties that may not be covered in a textbook.

"We definitely had struggles, but really learned what the [campaign presentation] process can really be like," said Kurtis Gobencion, BSBA '13. "There was more pressure because we had a real client, our materials had to be professional, we couldn't just say 'Good enough.'"

Professional Quality

Students may have been producing the work, but the final campaigns presented were anything but student quality, according to the clients.

"Everything I saw was top-notch," said Michael Chasen, CAS '94, and CEO of SocialRadar. "I couldn't have gotten better results going to an outside contractor."

Chasen, who has worked with several schools in the area, enjoys engaging with his alma mater and hopes to continue to work with Kogod in the future.

"I found the students to be very entrepreneurial. It was obvious they inherently understood the online media world, and they really stood out among schools I've worked with."

Lindsay Vickroy, nutrition policy coordinator for CSPI, echoed Chasen's positive experience.

"It was obvious to me that the students were very committed to the project and worked diligently to provide us with a product that would work," she said. "I know it wasn't easy to develop a campaign to market an idea instead of a product, but they really rose to the challenge."

Not so long ago half of humanity was all but invisible in history books. Bit characters in male narratives of wars and diplomacy, the best women could hope for were cameos, the occasional “woman worthies” who somehow transcended the limitations of the fair sex.

The odd chapter on Joan of Arc or Marie Curie notwithstanding, women have never been content to be written out of the narrative. They’ve been writing women’s histories all along. 

How those histories have grown in sophistication to the field’s more nuanced transnational approach is, in part, the subject of 10 essays collected in AU history professors Pamela S. Nadell and Kate Haulman’s new book, Making Women’s Histories: Beyond National Perspectives. 

In Making Women’s Histories, which Nadell and Haulman coedited, the perspective ranges from the experiences of women in Tsarist Russia and the British empire in Egypt and India to Qing dynasty China and the 1960s-era United States. 

In her essay “Women’s Past and the Currents of U.S. History,” essay contributor Kathy Peiss of the University of Pennsylvania cuts to the chase on what many women historians consider the political role of women’s history. 

“When I began work as a women’s historian,” Peiss writes, “we all promised each other a revolution. If the original goal was to write women into history, we have made amazing progress—from exclusion to inclusion, from private to public, from attention to ‘women worthies’ to an extraordinary exploration of women from many different origins and all walks of life, in the United States and around the world . . . Now, women’s history and gender analysis are shaping the comparative, transnational, and international histories that are beginning to revise anew how we understand the . . . past.” 

Women’s history’s often explicitly politically engaged mission, coeditor Nadell maintains, makes it no different from other kinds of history—African American history, say, or her own field of Jewish history. Nor are all women’s historians writing today “engaged in the same kind of political project,” she says. 

Women’s history now enjoys much more public awareness. But progress hasn’t always been linear. Take the growing popularity of Women’s History Month. 

Nadell’s coeditor, AU history professor Haulman, is at best ambivalent about the annual recognition of women’s accomplishments.

“I’m not a huge fan of Women’s History Month,” Haulman says. “It had utility for its time. But every month is Women’s History Month. Women’s history is everywhere. Segmenting it into its particular month can have a marginalizing effect.” 

And that old heroine, the woman worthy, has hardly faded away. News of the first woman this, or the first woman that, is a TV and newspaper staple. 

“I just got something today, the first female rabbi chaplain in the U.S. Air Force,” Nadell says. 

Even so, she agrees that women worthies can serve a positive purpose. 

“For somebody not trained as a historian, they’re manageable, they’re understandable,” she says. “They’re an individual life within your particular capacity to understand. The kind of more theoretical and sophisticated work we do in terms of women’s history isn’t always so accessible. So I understand the reason for it.” 

An important benefit of women’s history coming to the forefront is its effect on historians in general. It’s no longer acceptable to pretend that half the human race doesn’t exist, says Nadell. 

The book is dedicated to the memory of Robert Griffith, who was responsible for the spring 2008 AU conference on women’s and gender history from which the idea for the book was born. 

Nadell and Haulman write in the book’s acknowledgments, “[T]hat this book is now in your hands is due in part to the efforts and encouragement of our colleague, friend, and then department chair, the late Professor Robert Griffith. When a fund created in the 1890s for the ‘education of young women alone,’ unexpectedly fell into his lap, Bob, with his characteristic grand vision, imagined a series of projects which would advance the field of women’s and gender history . . . American University’s Clendenen Fund for Women’s and Gender History was born.” 

Asked which of the book’s essays they liked best, Nadell and Haulman both smile. 

“We love all of our children equally,” Haulman says. 

Making Women’s Histories: Beyond National Perspectives (NYU: 2013) contains essays written by Arianne Chernock (Boston University), Anna Clark (University of Minnesota), Barbara Engel (University of Colorado–Boulder), Jocelyn Olcott (Duke), Kathy Peiss (University of Pennsylvania), Lisa Pollard (University of North Carolina–Wilmington), Claire Robertson (Ohio State), Mytheli Sreenivas (Ohio State), Ulrike Strasser (University of California–Irvine), Heidi Tinsman (University of California–Irvine), and Cristina Zaccarini (Adelphi). Nadell and Haulman wrote the book’s introduction.

As a Northwest D.C. native, Dr. Laurie Cutting brought her voracious love of reading to AU's library even before she was enrolled as a college student. Recalling her high school memories of studying in Bender Library, Laurie returned to AU as a student. While she always knew that she wanted to work with children somehow, she, like many students early in their careers, was unsure of how to get there. Laurie excelled in her literature degree program while also taking some pre-med classes and graduated cum laude in 1993. 

From D.C. to Chicago, Laurie went on to receive her doctorate in communication sciences and disorders from Northwestern University. While there, she completed an internship with top-notch childhood development learning centers, such as Johns Hopkins Kennedy Krieger Institute, Yale University School of Medicine's Center for Learning and Attention, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Coupling her understanding of literature with her learning in cognitive development, Laurie conducted research for 12 years, first as a postdoctoral fellow and then as a member of the faculty, at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine/Kennedy Krieger Institute. She tested how learning disabilities manifest themselves in early childhood and how the neural structure and function of the brain can begin to inform educational practices.

Currently, Laurie holds multiple faculty positions at Vanderbilt University, including an endowed chair with appointments in both Vanderbilt's Peabody College of Education and Vanderbilt's Medical School. She is also the faculty director of Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Reading Clinic, and part of the Vanderbilt Brain Institute. Her diverse research is part of a new discipline known as educational neuroscience, which integrates previously isolated bodies of knowledge to form new exciting connections. Laurie embodies a new age of scientists whose backgrounds in the arts serve to inform their passion and dedication to social causes.

Laurie excitedly admits that while her educational path was non-traditional, in retrospect, she wouldn't have it any other way. "I would not be where I am today without my time at AU," she said. She remains very close with several of her friends from AU, including her best friend. Their sons were born two weeks apart, and the families regularly hear stories from their time on campus.

Dr. Sara Nieves-Grafals, CAS/BS ’75, CAS/MA ’79, CAS/PhD ’80, practiced clinical psychology for 32 years, has traveled the world, co-authored a travel cookbook called Mystical Places and Marvelous Meals with her husband, and speaks five languages fluently. She is also one of the newest members of the American University Alumni Board.

While growing up in Puerto Rico, Sara says, “I had a life-changing experience that influenced my desire to celebrate life everyday and to keep learning for the rest of my life. When I was 18 years old, I contracted viral encephalitis from a mosquito bite. I was in a coma for a week.

“Physicians told my parents that if I survived, I should forget about ever going to college because I would likely have brain damage. I fully recovered. Yet it was not until I took a battery of neuropsychology tests while training as a doctoral student that I breathed a sigh of relief.”

Despite her doctors’ predictions, Sara began her undergraduate degree at another institution, and eventually transferred to AU for its more challenging academics. She completed her bachelor’s in psychology, then decided to pursue her doctorate in psychology at AU as well.

“The [psychology] professors were excited about the field and helped guide students. … The whole experience was such a privilege. It was a very collaborative environment and conducive to learning,” she says. She especially admires psychology professors Dr. Jim Gray and Dr. Tony Riley – now the department’s chair.

Sara decided to become more involved with AU after receiving two free men’s basketball tickets in the mail. “Why not get in touch with your inner Eagle?” asked her husband, whom she says is “an Eagle by marriage.”

“Now that I am retired, I have more time, and AU was so helpful to me,” she says. Sara has taken advantage of all AU has to offer while volunteering her time and expertise to help the university.

In addition to joining the Alumni Board, Sara is auditing an art history course through the alumni audit program. “I love being able to go back to school to see the technology and how people learn now. I have my first exam on Friday. I’m excited!” she says.

She is helping plan a psychology reunion to honor current department chair Dr. Tony Riley, who has been at AU for 35 years. Since she lives near the university, she enjoys coming to alumni events and interacting with current students. “I was at a multicultural alumni event the other day, and it was like an AU family. Alumni can guide and mentor students now in a way that wasn’t available to us as students,” she says.

When Mayra Rivera, CAS/BS ’13, was a senior at Bell Multicultural High School in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., she was No. 2 in her class of 173 students. But as the daughter of El Salvadorian immigrants and with her mother a small business owner, Rivera wasn’t sure if she was going to apply to college.  

“I never heard of American University, even though I live here in Washington, D.C.,” Rivera says. “But during my junior and senior year, we had a representative from AU come over and give us a presentation, and I started thinking about it.”

Rivera applied to AU, and, thanks to a competitive financial package, she accepted. Four years later, with multiple federal work study (FWS) positions under her belt and a passion for working with children, Rivera is taking advantage of an assortment of student employment and volunteer opportunities both on and off the campus. As a first-generation student, Rivera is changing her family’s expectations about a college education and blazing a trail for her younger relatives while still finding ways to give back to her community.

Rivera has plans to use her degree in health promotion to educate children about the power they have over their bodies and choices. The adaptability and individuality of the subject appealed to Rivera.

“You have the power to change your health—to eat healthier, to exercise—and I feel like the reason why a lot of people don’t stick to diets or don’t go and work out is because they don’t know, they lack the education,” Rivera said. “So with health promotion, I’m learning how to implement programs and ways to approach how to make changes today.”

Sharing those lessons with children has been the main thrust of Rivera’s FWS positions with DC Reads and Kid Power. Introduced to the organizations through the Career Center’s Student Employment Coordinator, Tasha Daniels, Rivera worked with DC Reads for a year and then transitioned to Kid Power, where she has been for the last two years.

Students looking for FWS positions or part-time jobs on campus should regularly check the AU Student Jobs website, www.american.edu/studentjobs, keep an eye on list-serv or department emails that may advertise positions, and should be persistent, Daniels says. Look often, both before and during the semester, to see what kind of opportunities are out there, she suggests.

“Finding any job is a process,” Daniels says. “Keep applying until [you] land a position. … Submit professional application materials—resume and tailored cover letter—to increase [the] likelihood of landing a position.”

With both of her FWS opportunities, Rivera has been able to stay local and focused on her educational goals. During her time at DC Reads, Rivera worked with students one-on-one at CentroNía, a bilingual charter school in Columbia Heights—a five-minute walk from her home. At Kid Power, where Rivera both works as a FWS employee and is conducting an internship, Rivera is applying her knowledge about physical health and nutrition while leading whole classes.

“I was able to give back to my community,” Rivera says, and her impact is still felt years later. “The mom of the girl who I tutored at DC Reads works at Target and I also work at Target, and we always talk, and I always ask her questions about her daughter—I just saw them, and she’s grown up. And it’s nice to see they remember me.”

Rivera ensures the students remember her lessons about health, too. Thanks to encouragement from her Kid Power supervisor Shaden Dowiatt, Rivera is involved in the program Veggie Time, teaching students about gardening and nutrition.

“She’s fantastic; the kids really, really love her,” says Dowiatt, SIS/MA ’10, LAMB Site Director for Kid Power. “I think she relates really well to the students; she’s always very positive, smiles a lot, is pretty easygoing. Her passion and her focus is obviously on health education. This year she’s been doing an internship with me—she’s helped develop some of the lessons about nutrition and I’ve encouraged her to share those lessons with the students.”

And Rivera isn’t the only AU student at Kid Power. The organization employed both university alumni and 44 FWS students in fall 2012—about five to six AU volunteers are located at each of Kid Power’s 10 sites, Dowaitt says—and that atmosphere creates an undeniable sense of camaraderie.

“This past summer, we had this close connection,” Rivera says of her AU peers who also worked with Kid Power at their summer camp. “We all hung out at night, we had dinner and stuff together—we created this little AU family.”

And as for Rivera’s own family, they’ve been affected by her college choice, too. Although her mother was initially skeptical of her decision to apply to AU and hoped Rivera would help her with her small business, she’s grown to appreciate that Rivera “wants to do more”—“she’s always encouraging me, and now she brags about me going to college,” Rivera says. And Rivera’s younger sister has followed in her footsteps, and is currently a student at Georgetown University.

With graduation coming up in May, Rivera hopes to volunteer with other health- or children-focused nonprofit organizations and eventually gain employment at one; graduate school isn’t out of the question, either. But for now, she’s staying with Kid Power, hoping to introduce students to healthy recipes and eating habits. Without these FWS opportunities, Rivera says she’s not sure how she would have been able to so effectively prepare for her career.

“I never heard of Kid Power or DC Reads before federal work study, but it’s my interest to work with kids and to help them,” Rivera says. “If it weren’t for [FWS], I don’t know how I would get this experience.”

“My entire career has been devoted to public service, the law, and improving the administration of justice,” said Rainey Ransom Brandt, CAS/BGS ’89, SPA/MS ’90, CAS-SPA/PhD ’93, during her Senate confirmation hearing to become an associate judge of the District of Columbia Superior Court.

When announcing her nomination in March 2012, President Obama said, “Throughout her career, Rainey Ransom Brandt has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to justice. I am proud to nominate her to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.”

Although she is still awaiting confirmation from the Senate to become an associate judge of the D.C. Superior Court, Brandt was sworn in as a Superior Court magistrate judge on November 7 after spending 14 years as special counsel to the chief judge of the D.C. Superior Court.

As special counsel, Brandt was the in-house expert on criminal law and prisoners’ rights, handling sentencing issues and answering inquiries regarding law changes. In her new role as a magistrate judge, she will preside over preliminary hearings in domestic violence cases, including arraignments and child support.

While attending American University, Brandt had different plans. The popularity of the show “L.A. Law” piqued her interest in pursuing a career as an FBI agent. But research she conducted at the now-closed Lorton Prison while completing her PhD in justice with a specialization in corrections changed her mind. She decided to go to law school at Catholic University, but no longer wanted to join the FBI.

Brandt taught classes while she was a graduate student and has remained committed to AU as an adjunct associate professor for 21 years – including one year as a full-time professor – and teaches one criminal justice class every semester.

“I learn more from my students than they learn from me,” Brandt says. Moderating classroom discussions has shown her the value of integrating many opinions and points of view, and she hopes her experience as a professor in the classroom will translate to being a judge in the courtroom.

“My students have taught me how to deal with issues and controversy. As a professor, I have always tried to be a calming influence over their chaotic lives. … Having to deal with all those different scenarios over the years has taught me how to be calm and rational under pressure,” she adds.

No matter where her career goes next, Brandt’s dedication to AU and education is unwavering. She says, “I will always remain a professor at heart. … I won’t stop that just because I’m becoming a judge.”

For Ron Vogel, CAS/BA ’72, the lessons of running a business came as a student on the campus of American University.

Ron owns Booeymonger, a thriving D.C.-area delicatessen that cooks up specialty sandwiches fresh to order. He stays busy serving as what he describes as a “cheerleader/ motivator/repairman/traffic controller” for each of the deli’s four locations—the original in Georgetown; Friendship Heights; Bethesda; and Ballston, the newest.

Owning a restaurant is not the first job he had in mind. When he came to AU, Ron set out to follow in the footsteps of his father and brother, who were dentists. However, science coursework did not prove to be his cup of tea, and a conversation with then-associate dean Ruth McFeeter changed his outlook.

“She told me, ‘Do what you’re good at, instead of what you think you should be doing,’” Ron recounts. What he was good at was the food business. He found a home at 97 Carry Out, a student-run carry-out service on campus. He began working there his first year of school in 1968, and by 1970 ran the entire operation.

What Ron experienced there laid the foundation for the rest of his career. “It humbled me,” he says, with particular reverence for his fellow workers who served food directly in the dining halls. “They had a certain respect for the job, a certain respect for the students. It gave me a good sense of what hospitality is all about,” he says.

A guiding principle that Ron lives by is treating all of his employees as if he worked for them. He has a clear philosophy on leadership. “There are two ways to motivate people,” he explains, pausing to set up the contrast. “You can give them more money and more input on decisions; or you can work alongside them.” Moments before uttering these words, Ron jumped up to assist a patron with a stroller entering his restaurant.

Booeymonger also has provided Ron with a natural outlet to stay connected to AU, primarily through the athletic department, which he passionately supports. Feeding athletes at countless sporting events sparked a close relationship with the basketball team in particular, with whom he occasionally travels.

A one-time AU basketball player himself, Ron’s genuine admiration for student-athletes is obvious. “Whenever I talk to them, they want to ask me about my experience in business, but I want to know more about them!” he exclaims, his face lighting up. What inspires Ron the most about college athletics is the incredible amount of work the students put in to be successful both on the field and in the classroom. “I have such an appreciation for what they do.”

As his restaurant hours become less intensive, Ron looks forward to spending more time volunteering at AU. He remembers fondly an occasion when he spoke to a class of business students, and he hopes he will get the opportunity again. In addition, he could see himself one day as a guide for Discover DC, a program that introduces new students to sights around the city. In whatever capacity he gives back, Ron will always cherish the personal interactions and most enjoy “dealing with students, helping them get involved.”

Ron will be honored with this year’s Alumni Eagle Award, given to alumni who have rendered outstanding service to the university, the alumni association, or both.

The Republican Party tapped American University alumna Dr. Sharona Ross, CAS/BS ’95, as its designated surgeon for the party’s convention in Tampa this past August. Given her long list of academic and medical accomplishments, it’s no surprise that, in an emergency, Ross was trusted to save the lives of some of our country’s most prominent politicians.

Ross is director of minimally invasive surgery and surgical endoscopy at the Florida Hospital Tampa, Southeastern Center for Digestive Disorders Pancreatic Cancer – a clinic she recently founded with her longtime mentor.

As designated surgeon to the 2012 Republican National Convention, Ross was charged with assembling teams of doctors in Tampa and surrounding cities who would be on call and ready to treat any VIPs attending the convention, including GOP leaders, members of congress, and delegates. If anyone needed surgery, Ross would be their surgeon.

Thankfully, she says, her surgical skills were not needed during the convention.

Ross discovered her love of surgery when she was only five years old, growing up in Israel. She recalls, “I was walking behind my mother coming home from school, and there was roadkill. She stopped to talk with a friend and didn’t notice that I was literally taking all the organs out and lining them up. It was really interesting to me.”

Her mother was understandably disturbed, but Ross knew she found her calling. At age 12, she met a German pathologist who agreed to let her assist in breast cancer research every day after school.

Upon entering the Israeli military, Ross joined the medical corps and became the head of a military medical clinic. In Israel, she met her future husband, Jack Ross, SOC/BA ’87, SIS/MA ’93, WCL/JD ’99, who had just graduated with his bachelor’s degree from AU, and he convinced her to move to the United States.

Ross did not know English, but she enrolled in two courses – math and biology – at AU while her husband began his master’s program. Math was easy, since it was mostly numbers, but biology was a challenge.

“I went to the first class, and I couldn’t understand one word. So I recorded every class, then I sat in the library until it closed every night. With my dictionary and recorder, I transcribed everything the professor said. I had the best notes in the class,” Ross says, adding that she earned an A in the course.

Her perseverance paid off, and Ross graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, with honors. “I had a great experience at AU. I loved every minute of it,” she says.

After graduating from AU, Ross attended George Washington University and earned her MD, again with honors.

While in school, Ross gave birth to three children. Based on her experience, she believes that women can accomplish anything they want. She hopes more women will become surgeons, which is why she founded the Women in Surgery Initiative to educate and encourage more women to join the field.

Ross says, “I tell women who are considering becoming surgeons: Despite all the obstacles that I had with language and a new culture… it’s possible to succeed. When I started medical school, I had a 17-month-old son and a 2-month-old daughter, and my husband was in law school. Everyone said, ‘It can’t be done,’ but if you want it enough, you’ll make it happen. Believe in yourself.”

When alumnus John Bell, CAS/MEd ’83, took a summer job, he didn’t know it would change his life. Upon meeting gunshot victim Alex Gàlvez, Bell began a journey of friendship, education, and service which led to the creation of Transitions Foundation of Guatemala.

Bell’s career began in the DC Public School System and led him to AU for special education training, supported by the Department of Education. A member of a small cohort of graduate students, Bell taught during the day and took classes on nights and weekends. Bell recalls they were “trained as leaders, not teachers.”

While in Guatemala to volunteer and study Spanish, Bell met Galvez, who was dying from a paralyzing gunshot wound because he couldn’t get medical care. Returning to Washington, Bell utilized a network of people to obtain assistance for Galvez and personally assisted others.

By aiding Galvez, Bell thought he had reached his pinnacle. However, when Galvez shared news that others needed assistance, Bell knew a path of service awaited him. He and Galvez just created Transitions Foundation of Guatemala, which assists Guatemalans with disabilities.

Through a holistic approach, clients are supported through health and rehabilitation, education, spiritual development, leadership, social interaction, and employment opportunities. The Wheelchair Workshop and Prosthetic & Orthotics Programs are at the forefront of these initiatives. As the foundation’s mission grew beyond grassroots work, they found partnerships with Rotary International as well as engineering and design groups such as Designers without Borders, MIT, Cal Tech, and San Francisco State University, that support the wheelchair program.

Bell stresses their programs are a collaboration between disabled and non disabled, one member helping another. When you work within a family setting, he says, there’s a “higher accountability and respect” for the work that you’re doing . . . you drive yourself to do your best.”

While Galvez is the face of the organization, Bell is steadfast in his role as co-founder and directs operations and donor relations. Both travel on donor trips – requesting goods and funds – and share news of the violence and challenges faced in Guatemala. In July 2012, Galvez will speak before the UN Session on Arms Trade Treaties; he is recognized as a person who chose to help others as a result of his personal experience.

Looking back, Bell says, “AU gave [me] major tools and formation with higher level academics.” It was an environment that formalized his training. Bell maintains great respect for AU. And recalling his graduate cohort, he remembers “[we] were tight,” and camaraderie is reflected in his work in Guatemala.

Transitions Foundation of Guatemala has set a great example of a holistic approach to aiding the disabled and providing access to care for Guatemalans. Bell says, “In Guatemala, you see struggles, and it helps to keep your perspectives.” And for Bell, just one of those struggles introduced him to a life’s work in service to others.

Every parent has trouble letting go when their children grow up, but Glen Finland, CAS/MFA ’06, had an especially difficult time. In her book, Next Stop: A Memoir of Family, Finland chronicles the story of teaching her adult son David, who has autism, how to navigate the D.C. metro system.

Finland writes, “It’s important to know that a story about autism isn’t a story about a single child. It is a story about an entire family.” Next Stop is a candid, sometimes funny, sometimes painfully honest portrayal of raising a differently-abled child and the toll it takes on Finland’s other two sons and her marriage.

Finland’s story revolves around riding the D.C. metro with 21-year-old David one summer, teaching him all the routes and stops, hoping it would afford David more independence. By August, David announced he was ready to journey on his own; Finland wasn’t. But like so many other mothers, she took a leap of faith. Unlike most other mothers, though, she was genuinely concerned she may never see her son again. David did come home, and he continues to ride the metro on his own.

David has done extremely well since learning to navigate public transit. He is a year-round groundskeeper at a park and, during baseball season, also works as a ticket-taker for the Washington Nationals. Finland says the Nationals organization has been extremely kind to David, who loves baseball. In describing her son, she writes, “David’s is a kind of exuberance that reveals itself by swinging an imaginary baseball bat whenever he’s really happy. Feet squared, wrists piled up high on his right shoulder, and swoosh!”

David loves to run marathons and has participated in the New York City Marathon and twice ran the Marine Corps Marathon. Riding the metro alone and running in marathons, David is carving out his independence and embarking on his own adventure, but his mother and family are always there to cheer him on from the sidelines.

In Next Stop, Finland writes, “Let’s tell our stories – and laugh, and cry, and bang our heads on the table if we must – but let’s tell them true.” This is precisely what makes her story so compelling.

As an adjunct professor at American University, Finland teaches her students a similar lesson, one that one of her own favorite AU professors taught her: “Write your way into discovery. Tell your own story.”

Is a lightning bolt simply a flash of light in the sky? For alumnus Leonard Rosen, CAS/PhD ’81, observation of natural patterns like lightning, crop formations, and veins within a cabbage leaf propelled him into the mathematics of fractals. From his research came his first novel, a literary thriller called All Cry Chaos. 

While flying across the country, Rosen surveyed the landscape below. What he saw begged the question, what do patterns in nature mean, and is there, in fact, a pattern maker? Such ponderings led him to study with mathematicians as well as engage theological questions. The result: All Cry Chaos, published in September 2011.

Rosen credits the novel’s success in part to its accessibility. An explosive attack depicts a situation from today’s global community. Readers follow Interpol inspector Henri Poincare as he investigates, and they are treated to Rosen’s descriptive language and dialogue. 

Following undergraduate studies at Trinity College (Conn.) in English and education, Rosen taught high school before enrolling at American to study composition and expository writing. He credits the books selected by AU professors as “foundational and meaningful.” During his study at AU, Rosen notes that the “nature and quality of conversation changed me.” 

Rosen had the opportunity to co-author a text book on writing, still used in college classrooms today, with an AU instructor, which has led to speaking engagements with composition instructors and graduate students. He also returned to the classroom as an instructor at Bentley and Harvard universities.

He reflects that his experiences at AU contributed to his career path and provided him with “the degree and license” to pursue further literary aspirations. Rosen has written a variety of works, ranging from text books to fiction, and including radio essays for NPR, op-ed pieces, and work on a new novel which will serve as the prequel to All Cry Chaos.

Grateful to earn his living as a writer, Rosen is pleased by the positive critical and popular response for All Cry Chaos. From reviews posted by The Washington Post and The New York Times as well as responses from individual readers who “read the book as he saw it,” Rosen’s excitement is genuine and palpable.

The thriller was nominated for two awards: the Edgar Award for Best First Novel issued by the Mystery Writers of America as well as the first Chautauqua Prize. Rosen humbly views the nominations as recognition of the novel’s literary merit.

 n the late 1960s and 1970s, in the midst of the Cold War and an increasingly dynamic political climate, Andrea Rugh, anthropology PhD ’78, and her husband, a Foreign Service officer, were stationed in several countries of the Middle East, a region of the world that was becoming more important. Rugh, however, wasn’t satisfied as an “embassy-dependent spouse” and began looking to not only learn about the Middle Eastern societies in which she was living, but to understand and analyze them.

At first, Rugh found it difficult to be taken seriously. She applied for positions in Cairo, Egypt, where they were stationed, but nothing was panning out. So when Rugh was asked to accompany a team of Americans and Egyptians to assess the needs of the Egyptian education system so USAID could provide assistance, she jumped at the chance. “My job was to help the experts understand what they were seeing and hearing,” says Rugh. “But when most of the American team abandoned the survey because of the ‘primitive accommodations,’ I was left with two others to write the report of our findings.” Being thrown into this situation gave Rugh the fuel she needed to become an almost overnight education expert, and she hasn’t turned back since.

In late 1972, while she, her husband, and three young children were home on leave from the Foreign Service, Rugh wanted a way to better understand a community she had lived in and observed in Saudi Arabia. “By then, we had lived in five countries, mostly in the Middle East. I was beginning to speak some Arabic and trying to immerse myself in Arabic cultures,” says Rugh. “In Saudi Arabia, I tried to map the kin links of the women I knew and found them so interconnected that I couldn’t begin to draw coherent trees.”

Rugh made an appointment with an AU anthropology professor to see if there was a course that would help her to understand the techniques of studying cultures. At the suggestion of the professor, Rugh enrolled in a continuing education course in ethnography and fell in love with the program, starting an MA and later a PhD in anthropology at AU 15 years after completing an undergraduate degree. “AU not only gave me the ability to make the ‘trees’ I wanted,” says Rugh, “but also gave me a solid theoretical background for the more than 30 years I continued to live in the Middle East.”

Eight books and thirty years later, Rugh still works tirelessly to help students and development professionals understand the realities and needs of education assistance in the Middle East. Her newest book, International Development in Practice: Education Assistance in Egypt, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, published in January 2012, portrays the realities of development work in the field. “Perhaps the hardest part in writing it was reliving the disappointment when government politics undermined some of the real reforms that were taking place,” says Rugh. “But that is one of the realities of assistance work.”

In writing this book, Rugh used her work experiences in Egypt, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to show specific examples of how education problems were addressed on the ground. Education assistance work usually focuses on issues of access to education opportunities, program quality, and capacity building to manage education systems. At the time, a particular emphasis was encouraging more girls to enroll and stay in school.

In Egypt, Rugh studied the impact of USAID support for school construction and practical courses in primary schools. In Pakistan, she worked to design and implement a major education assistance program. “Unfortunately, after the Soviets left Afghanistan, the U.S. lost interest in Pakistan,” says Rugh, “and halted its development work using the excuse of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. The education project, which was making significant progress, was suddenly stopped after four years, rather than the ten planned.”

Rugh went on to work with UNICEF in Afghanistan to reinvigorate international education programs that had been suspended when the Taliban banned girls and female teachers from schools. “Our efforts there focused on a ‘program in a textbook’ that could be delivered to any group that wanted it,” says Rugh. “The program was ready to use when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, but just as UNICEF was mounting a huge ‘Back to School’ effort, USAID convinced Afghan authorities to use an old USAID-funded book and our book was abandoned.”

Rugh says that while much development and assistance work is positive, the “donor system” of reporting prevents developers from learning all they could from past experience. “Reports of completed projects stress positive outcomes to ensure future funding and jobs for their consultants,” says Rugh. “As a result, it’s difficult to learn from others’ mistakes, and those entering the field are left to start afresh building their own expertise.”

Rugh believes her book portrays the realties of fieldwork and the challenges faced by development professionals in a way that hasn’t been done before. “In many ways, these countries are entirely different—their history with education, their geographic conditions, their institutional capacities all differ,” she says. “But many of their education problems are the same—difficulties in providing schooling opportunities, an emphasis on rote learning, and the bureaucratic rigidities that make reform almost impossible. In all of these countries, the majority of parents want their children to learn, but those children who remain at home often do so because schooling facilities are not accessible.”

Over her long career, Rugh finds education is important to the very fabric of societies. “Every school system in the world seeks to produce the educated adults the society expects,” says Rugh, “whether that means independent, problem-solving adults or those with refined manners befitting educated persons. That means a program that works in one culture might be resisted in another.” Rugh says that many development experts neglect this integral aspect of development. “Experts sent out to other countries rarely test whether their methods and solutions work in a new context.”

But Rugh says that these challenges are what make the work fascinating. “What makes this work interesting to me,” says Rugh, “are the conflicting ideologies and cultural perspectives that produce challenges every day in the field."