NEWS

Local angles: Boone, Chapel Hill, Mebane, Mooresville,
Wilmington; Cypress, Calif.; Garden City, Kan.

CHAPEL HILL -- Seven University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students won Class of 1938 Summer Study Abroad Fellowships to complete study projects of their own design this summer in other countries.

Their topics range from research in England on the poet T.S. Eliot to a study in Istanbul, Turkey, of how satellite communication influences Kurdish identity. One sophomore even aims to create an educational scholarship for academically gifted but financially disadvantaged females in Tanzania.

Class of 1938 winners who received $3,500 each were four juniors, Guney Acipayamli of Wilmington, Argrow Evans of Mebane, Tiffany Gillan of Garden City, Kan., and Sarah Powell of Cypress, Calif., and two sophomores, Hilary Rose Lippert of Mooresville and Blair Turner of Boone.

The seventh winner, junior Melanie Fehrenbacher of Chapel Hill, won a $2,900 Witten Travel Award, made annually to the first alternate of the regular fellowship selection process and funded by class of 1938 members Charles and Margaret Witten of Columbia, S.C.

Since 1975, an endowment created by UNC’s Class of 1938 has funded independent projects abroad by UNC students annually. Members of the class, who lived through and lost friends to World War II, created the endowment to help foster international understanding and promote world peace.

The program is administered by UNC’s International Center, which each year coordinates a committee to select finalists. Selection is based on quality of applicants’ proposals for independent study abroad, financial need and seriousness of academic purpose, said Diana Levy, center assistant director. Each spring, representatives from the center, the study abroad office, members of the Class of 1938 and former fellowship winners interview semifinalists and name finalists. Members of the Class of 1938 and fellows choose the recipients.

Acipayamli, a journalism and mass communication major specializing in newspaper reporting, is living with a Kurdish family in Istanbul, home to the largest concentration of Turkish Kurds.

In her proposal to the 1938 selection committee, she wrote that she will interview Kurds living in the city, take photos and keep a journal. Her findings will help her complete a senior thesis on how satellite communication is shaping the identity of the Kurdish minority in Turkey. They also will sharpen her skills as a journalist working abroad.

Acipayamli wrote that the Kurdish language was banned in Turkey until 1999, and Kurdish broadcasting until 2002. But in 1995, a Kurdish language station began broadcasting via satellite from Britain. Acipayamli is researching the effects of that change.

At UNC, she has participated in the International Student Association, honors and literature programs and written for the Daily Tar Heel and the Chapel Hill Herald.

Evans, a communication studies and African-American studies major, is interning with Mindmatics, an advertising and marketing firm in London, and taking college classes there. She will study the British media, working with scholars and industry professionals there.

At UNC, Evans is involved in the National Association of Black Journalists, the Black Student Movement and the Opeyo! modern dance company. She is chief senior class marshal and has participated in the Toastmasters public speaking club.

Gillan is researching Sephardic Jewish communities in Sevilla, Spain, and Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, studying how they remain connected despite differences, time and distance. The Sephardim were a branch of European Jews who settled in Spain and Portugal, and later in Greece, England, the Netherlands and the Americas.

An international studies and history major, Gillan wrote in her proposal, "The chance to preserve the stories of two distinct, fading minority communities while simultaneously discovering my own identity creates the ideal environment for personal and academic growth." She wrote that she aims to dedicate her life to helping isolated minority communities, immigrants and refugees.

Lippert, a political science major, wrote that she believes education can help alleviate poverty in developing nations. She is traveling within Tanzania, where she says poverty is so prevalent that many families cannot afford secondary school for their children.

Visiting contacts provided by Dr. Julius Nyang’Oro, head of the UNC African and Afro-American studies department and a native Tanzanian, Lippert will observe the culture. Upon returning to UNC, she will use her findings to seek a secondary school scholarship for that country, provided through the UNC group Students for Students International.

Powell, a music major, is in the American Institute of Musical Studies’ vocal performance program in Graz, Austria. At UNC, Powell sings in the opera workshop, Carolina Tar Heel Voices and the Carolina Choir. She aims to become a professional vocalist.

At the institute, she will sharpen German conversation and lyric diction skills, take voice lessons with top instructors and study the poetry of songs as literature, she wrote. She also will study the German Lied, a vocal music form prevalent in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Turner is in Malawi, Africa, working with the nonprofit World Camp for Kids, teaching environmental awareness, nutrition, creative arts and AIDS education. She also is studying the impact of HIV on Malawi’s social structure by conducting interviews and taking photographs.

Turner, a psychology major with a minor in chemistry, also works with World Camp at Carolina, and with the Episcopal campus ministry and Habitat for Humanity. She also is a Chapel Hill AIDS Alliance volunteer. When she returns from Malawi, Turner hopes to mount public displays about her project. She plans to continue developing AIDS curricula with World Camp and working with the National Episcopal AIDS Coalition and the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance.

Fehrenbacher, an English major, is using the Witten award to visit London, Bath, Cambridge and Canterbury, England, researching 20^th-century author T.S. Eliot. She plans to write an honors thesis on Eliot in her senior year.

"Experiencing the areas of England where Eliot lived and was inspired, as well as having access to British libraries with rare information about him, would ideally provide me a rich base of knowledge for writing my thesis," Fehrenbacher wrote in her proposal.

At UNC, she is in the N.C. Teaching Fellows program, sings in the women’s glee club and volunteers with the Orange County Rape Crisis Center.

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Contact: Diana Levy, 919-962-5661, dmlevy@email.unc.edu