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“It’s actually facilitation,” Jenney Stringer '08 (Manlius, N.Y.) said of her summer fellowship work. “I’m facilitating a garden.” Rising senior Stringer has been awarded the Community Service Fellowship, one of the two Levitt Summer Civic Engagement Fellowships. She will be working with Judith Owens-Manley, associate director for community research, on a project to create and facilitate a community garden in Utica.

It was not your ordinary job interview. Michael Viveiros '08 (East Greenwich, R.I.) was chatting with his counselor in the Career Center and mentioned he had some experience with computer-based presentations. He was subsequently hired by the center to produce podcasts for their Web site.

This is “an investigation into various questions of perception and understanding,” wrote studio arts and English major Erin Shapiro '08 in her February proposal. Four months later, she has an Emerson grant to work on a sculptural exploration of natural elements, concentrating on the relationship between art, materials and audience reaction. She will work with Assistant Professor of Art Rebecca Murtaugh.

Some people start their summer research with an experiment, but Geoffrey Hicks '09 (Newton Mass.) preferred to start with a more abstract problem: the relationship between shame and spirituality and the African American experience. A dual major in English and African Studies, Hicks came to his topic through the plays of August Wilson and this summer takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the complicated issue of blackness in America.

One night last November, Max Currier '10 (Manlius, N.Y.) was thinking about his summer plans. It occurred to him at 3 a.m. that maybe he could get funding for his hobby of researching the current government and political situation; "regardless of what I did, I was going to be reading up on the war anyway," he thought. Later that year, he was awarded an Emerson Grant to research the Bush administration's actions regarding the War on Terror. Through extensive reading and analysis, Currier hopes to address the behavior of the Bush administration through the lens of Bush's key ministers.

Summer didn’t turn out quite as expected for Tamim Akiki ’08. The native of Lebanon had planned to go home for the summer and evaluate the objectives of the central bank as part of his Levitt research on the role of a central bank in a small open economy. Then came mid-July and Akiki found himself in a war zone between Israel and Hezbollah.

“I’ve always been thinking about this sharp transition from the traditional big family to the ‘124 family’ (one child, two parents, four grandparents),” said Xin Wang ’09 of her Levitt summer research project. Advised by Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, Wang spent her summer researching Chinese single children from different socioeconomic backgrounds with a special focus on their consumptive patterns.

Tumelano Gopolang ’08 (Orapa, Botswana) spent her summer chasing money. As an intern with the Trinity University Haiti Program in Washington, D.C., Gopolang researched the uses and delivery of economic aid pledged to Haiti in 2004.

Last winter, fresh from a semester in France, Sara Feuerstein ’07 (Rochester, N.Y.) headed to Washington, D.C. for a second semester off campus. While there, she did some extensive Internet research, called the French Embassy and asked for an interview. Hired “on the spot,” Feuerstein spent the summer as an intern in the Publications Office of the French Embassy.

Xiaobo Ma ’09 (Chengdu, China) thinks big. Interested in the trend of growing individualism in Chinese college students, the sophomore math and economics major applied for and received an Emerson grant to investigate them, advised by Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government.