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Centrepiece Online | Summer/Fall 2000
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Fulbrights 2000Kristel Clayville '00 (Israel)
It was her exceptional language skills, say her professors, that won Kristel Clayville '00 of Frankfort, Ky., a Fulbright Fellowship to spend next year studying classical archaeology at the University of Haifa in Israel. She started French in third grade, then added Spanish, Latin, ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, and a smattering of German. The Fulbright program provided intensive modern Hebrew this summer. "If I'm going to visit a country I like to make an attempt at their language," she says. "I like to talk to people, and it's part of who they are." An anthropology and classics major, Clayville clearly is drawn toward other cultures. She did Centre's program in France because she wanted to try an environment in which she "wouldn't be that comfortable," she says. "I wanted to be surrounded by people who speak a different language." Yet there's more to life than language, and Clayville admits her interests are broad. As a fourth-grader, she told her parents she wanted to be a paleontologist after learning the name for a person who digs up dinosaur bones. In high school, she took as much science as she could. Then she went with Tom McCollough, Centre professor of religion, to help uncover ancient Roman ruins in Sepphoris, Israel, and archaeology captured her imagination. This summer was her third at the Israeli dig. "In the streets at Sepphoris you can see the cart tracks," she says with awe. "You feel like actual people lived there when you see the remains of their lives." Clayville's Fulbright project is an extension of her year long research into mosaics from three different centuries at Sepphoris. "I wanted to come at the archaeological evidence from a language background so I could read original text and then see where the material and anthropological worlds meet," she explains. "They don't always coincide. You've got texts that say no one was worshiping pagan gods in this place, but then you have a mosaic of a drinking contest between Dionysus and Hercules right next to the mikviot, which are the Jewish ritual baths." After her Fulbright year, Clayville has a place waiting at Harvard Divinity School. She plans to study religion but also classical archaeology and languages. Ultimately she would like to be a college professor. "One reason I studied so broadly is so I could come to a place like Centre," she says. "I could teach an array of things, and that's pretty appealing to me."
Cleaning up Campaign Finance Edmund Sauer '00 of Bardstown, Ky., celebrated his birthday in May with a bit of good news. On the day he turned 22, he learned that he would spend a year in Canada, courtesy of a Fulbright. Sauer will explore campaign financing while earning a master's degree at Queen's University in Ontario. Unlike the United States, Canada strictly limits the amount candidates can spend on their campaigns. His mentor at Queen's sat on the national commission that helped reform the Canadian system. Sauer hopes to pick up some tips that might work back home. Year after year, he says, campaign finance reforms are proposed in Washington but nothing is passed. One argument used is that restricting political contributions would limit the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. Part of SauerÕs research will be to see if Canadian candidates can get their messages out to voters in spite of financing restrictions. An economics and government major-as well as the tennis team's No. 1 player-Sauer's lifelong fascination with politics began as a child handing out leaflets door to door with his mother. Since then, he's worked on countless political races, interned in a senator's Washington, D.C., office, and led the Centre Democrats to become the largest campus chapter in the state. Yet Sauer's faith in the political system has been tempered by reality. "When I was a kid, politics was balloons and parties and meeting people," he says. "I'm not so idealistic now. Now I know it's picking up the phone to ask people for money. I just hate that part." Last year Sauer won a Truman Fellowship (for students interested in careers in public service), in part on the strength of his applicationÕs proposal to reform campaign financing. He plans to go to law school immediately after his Fulbright year, but says he would ultimately love to work for the Federal Election Commission, either prosecuting offenders or helping to interpret the laws. For a different perspective on money, Sauer spent the summer on a Truman-sponsored internship at the U.S. Mint. He traveled the country helping to market the new Sacagawea dollar coin and worked on econometric models to predict the number of all coins that the Mint will need to produce. "The Truman award changed my life," says Sauer. It's not just the prestige, the internships, or even the $30,000 in scholarship money. Instead, says Sauer, "It's the connections, the Truman community. It's the people in public service and political life that can help you accomplish whatever you want." With those connections-and his Canadian insights-perhaps Sauer will bring financing reform to America at last.
A Better Way for Healthcare Healthcare policy fascinates Carree Coffee '00, a biochemistry and molecular biology major from Louisville. As a junior, she studied socialized medicine during a term in London. As a senior, she designed a program for Kentucky as part of an independent study at the Danville hospital. Come next winter, she expected to be in Italy checking out the Italian system. Instead, a late July phone call from a Fulbright official threw her plans into a whirl. Thanks to some last-minute funding, Coffee will now spend the year as a Fulbright Scholar with the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. By looking at what does-and does not-work in Canada, she hopes to develop a plan to improve healthcare back home. It's ironic that the Canadian system is in such trouble today because even five years ago it was a model for other counties. "Our healthcare reforms in 1995 were originally modeled on Canada," Coffee notes. Unfortunately, the cost of the Canadian approach is now bankrupting the country's healthcare system. "I think you have to treat healthcare as either a commodity or a privilege," Coffee says. "It's hard to draw the line, because it's something that everyone should be entitled to. But at the same time, we have a free-market economy, and you can't just force the government to do it all." Coffee looks to her experience with a medical mission in Jamaica for a couple of possible solutions. For one, she believes that churches and other nonprofit organizations can play an important role in a national healthcare plan. She also thinks the mission approach is efficient. "You don't have the time and money to treat problems as they arise," she says. "You have to teach people how to keep themselves from getting sick. I think emphasizing preventative care is an investment that could save billions of dollars." This summer, as she has for the previous two, Coffee did spinal cord research at the University of Louisville. She will probably apply to medical school after her Fulbright year, but doesn't want to predict the future just yet. Regardless, she says, "I thought the more I know about healthcare policy the better. A lot of doctors don't know what's going on with all the politics, and that's part of the problem. It hurts the patients in the end."
Vive la Fran aiseaise John Goodman '00 spent the second grade in Gabon, a French-speaking country in west Africa, where his father had a Fulbright award to teach at the local university. Fifteen years later, the younger Goodman is planning his own Fulbright year in Africa. He will teach English in Réunion, an island department of France in the Indian Ocean off the southeast coast of Africa. "As its name suggests, R"uniounion (or 'meeting' in French) offers an incredibly interesting mix of cultures," says Goodman, a French and history major from Mobile, Ala. "On the island there are people of French, Muslim Indian, Hindu Indian, Chinese, and African descent, as well as Creoles (mixed peoples)." His return to Africa is actually the result of two important awards. In addition to the Fulbright, he was one of four Centre students selected by the French government for a program to teach French students English. The original Fulbright grant assigned him to Brittany; the other, to R"uniounion. Between a term with Centre's program in Strasbourg and another in Besançon, however, he had already spent time in France. Fortunately, the French government-sponsor of both awards-allowed him to transfer his Fulbright. Goodman enjoys the international arena. A 1998 summer internship at the Carter Center in Atlanta, only heightened his interest, especially since he worked with a former U.S. ambassador to India. Whatever his future holds, Goodman hopes it will include the language he loves. The year in Gabon gave him a useful ear for the accent, but he credits his Centre teachers for his current interest and facility. "They really pushed us to speak French in class and out of class," he says. "Dr. Keffer, for example, will never speak English with you. Period. He makes French less of a foreign language and more of an everyday thing." Although he graduated with the men's valedictorian prize, Goodman believes his greatest college achievement is his fluency in French. "When I came to Centre, I couldn't speak French at all," he says. "And when I left four years later I could. That's something very tangible that I can say I've learned. For me, that's really cool." —D.F.J. |
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