Synaptic Scholars
2010 Scholars
Ikenna Acholonu | Erin Baldassari | David Gainsboro | Mae-ling Lokko | Margaret O'Connor | Duncan Pickard | Talya Peltzman | Austin Siadak | Kelsi Stine
Download PDF of 2010 Synaptic Scholars
Ikenna Acholonu
My name is Ikenna Acholonu and I am a senior at Tufts University. I am a second generation Nigerian American but I was born and raised in Washington state. I am the last born of four children but I have a humongous family with up to 16 aunts and uncles and 45 cousins. However my family is even bigger than that because I meet new family members all the time. My name "Ikenna" means "my father's son" in Igbo, which is the native tongue of both my parents (of which I don't understand a word). I am truly my father's son constantly thinking about the next step in my life and looking back on where I've been. However I am a lot different from him in some ways. He's a quiet person and I am a lot of things but quiet is not one of them. I love to meet new people and hearing stories from people is my favorite activity. I strongly believe that each person you meet is an experience you can learn from, which is why I try to meet new people everyday.
Throughout my education I have felt that my identity as a Black male distinguished my experience from some of my peers, and with the exploration of my past, I am motivated to further understand the experiences of minority students in the United States educational system. In my search to learn more about minority students’ academic experience, I can utilize not only my personal insight into race and education but also the knowledge gained through my academics, involvement in student organizations, and past employment. These experiences have shaped my development as a leader as I continue to grow and find ways to contribute to minority communities. The personal and professional factors that have most informed my desire to understand the relationship between identity development and education within minority populations are the experiences that have allowed me to explore my personal identity as a leader while providing me with the tools and strategies to best implement service, advocacy, and policy.
Throughout my academic career, the classes and teachers that have most motivated me to learn related my learning to aspects of my identity, allowing me to draw on a foundation of knowledge based in my experiences and letting me learn from minority leaders of the past. In courses like African-American History, innovative frameworks were used to develop research and writing skills while at the same time viewing history through an African-American perspective. In relating to past leaders of color, I was able to understand the steps they took to become successful. It was important for me to see the role of minority leaders in shaping U.S. history because it taught me how my race could be viewed as an asset and not a detriment to my aspirations. The course encouraged me to become a leader in my own way.
Using the knowledge gained from my academics, I joined the student organization Tufts Emerging Black Leaders (EBL). My sophomore year I served as a Co-Chair for Community Outreach for the organization, which taught me the importance of serving minority communities through mentorship. The EBL Community Outreach committee has two projects, the Sankofa Youth Project (SYP) and the College Access Medford Program (CAMP). As the director of CAMP, I traveled to the neighboring Medford High School to mentor students of color on preparing for college working on personal statements for college applications, SATs and ACTs, and scholarships and financial aid applications. This was supplemented by the SYP program, which used interactive activities, field trips, organized events, in-depth discussions, and tutoring to instill the value of active citizenship while working to develop future goals. The importance of my mentorship was made clear when I was able to see the self discovery that resulted in the students as they found what they were passionate about by asking questions and engaging in open discussion. Within these programs students were also able to develop strong relationships, which provided them with support networks for the future.
Along with Tufts Emerging Black Leaders, my experience in the Tufts Summer Scholars program exposed me to the use of culture in promoting community involvement along with effective and innovative ways of advocating for change. The Tufts Summer Scholars program gave me the opportunity to conduct research with a professor, and my research focused on hip-hop and youth identity as I explored hip-hop culture and its use as a means to unite and mobilize youth around the world. With this experience and with the help of the IGL and Synaptic Scholars, I worked to foster the power of hip-hop culture within the Tufts community by creating the student organization Hip Hop for Social Change. This group holds an annual hip hop festival where international artists are invited to come and sit on panels with professors, students, and local artists to discuss different aspects of hip hop culture, its history, and its use in political action, culminating into a concert with these same artists. This event exposed me to fun and creative ways to use aspects of culture and identity to motivate youth to be involved in their communities, advocating for the changes that are important to them.
After learning ways to use cultural tools in advocacy, I wanted to understand how policy was created and implemented. Interning at Senator Patty Murray’s office the summer of 2009 gave me the opportunity to see the direct impact of policy on the average citizen. Listening to the stories of constituents in Washington State, I learned about the difficulty in serving diverse populations with the difference of opinions among them. However, the more I learned about the community I was serving, it became easier to answer questions and to provide help to those who needed it. With this increased communication with my community, I found effective ways to provide services and the quality of the work I did improved.
All of my personal and professional experiences shaped my relationships with my identity and have impacted my leadership style in specific ways while continuing to motivate me to learn more about the experience of minority students in our education system.In my academics, I have learned that as a leader I draw on my experiences and the examples of past leaders to make decisions that impact my community. Through my experiences in the Tufts Emerging Black Leaders, I realized that the true meaning of leadership comes with service to my community, and in the mentorship of future leaders of color. Also, in serving my community I look for effective and innovative ways to advocate for positive change, and in using cultural connections innovative programs can be developed to motivate others to be actively involved in their communities. Along with actively participating with my community, as a leader it is most important to receive feedback from the people being served because in listening to the voices of my community the most meaningful changes can be made. I thank the IGL for allowing and supporting this self-exploration amongst my talented peers which has helped to develop me into who I am today.
Erin Baldassari
Erin learned how to run, jump and play in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California with her older twin siblings, Robert and Teresa, and her two dogs, Leo and Bear. She moved to Santa Rosa, near the heart of California's wine country where she continued her involvement in theater, began to explore dance, and where she began to develop an interest in film, radio, and photography. Early in high school, Erin became involved in her local ACLU chapter, helped start a club that was politically active, and co-founded a student organization that advocated for the equal treatment of all students (in response to several racist threats against minority students at her school). She became a peer councilor, a position she considers one of her most formative because it allowed her to engage with students with whom she otherwise would not have had contact. Many of those contacts are still intact. After high school, Erin spent four months in Santiago, Chile where she learned Spanish and volunteered at Hogar Esperanza. She extended her initial trip to travel or volunteer in Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina, in total, a ten month trek. At Tufts, Erin has pursued her passion in photography through the student photojournalism organization, EXPOSURE, with whom she was privileged to attend a workshop in Kashmir, India this past summer. She is currently the Editor of Photography for an on-campus publication, the Tufts Observer . As a rising junior, Erin is pursuing an interdisciplinary plan-of-study major that will explore the intersection between economics and "human right," defined as a philosophical idea, a political good, and a result of economic conditions. Through Synaptics and as a result of her involvement in the EPIIC '07-'08 Colloquium on Global Poverty, Erin has become deeply invested in addressing issues of inequality in the city closest to Tufts, Boston. She is working with two other students to confront urban violence, and is developing a relationship with the Institute for the Study and Practice of Non Violence in Providence, RI.
David Gainsboro
Born just outside of Boston in Framingham, Massachusetts, David attended Concord Academy for high school before coming to Tufts in 2006. David has an extremely broad array of interests, which he pursues both in and out of class. As a Peace and Justice Studies/Sociology double-major, he is fascinated by conflict sociology, leadership in social movements and the sociology of war and peace. He enjoys journalism and creative writing, and is a regular contributor to the Tufts Daily and the Institute for Global Leadership's publication Discourse. A member of the Tufts Ultimate Frisbee Team, Club Lacrosse Team, and Ski Team, David is also on the Executive Board of the Tufts Mountain Club. He skis recreationally in the winter, and enjoys hiking in the White Mountains year-round. Currently, David intends to specialize his studies in Violent Conflict Resolution, an area which he believes suffers from a lack of research and understanding. Particularly, he is fascinated by the Sri Lankan conflict. A high school trip to Thailand and Cambodia piqued David's interest in Southeast Asian culture and history. During his freshman year, coursework led him to discover the conflict between the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan government. In learning about this movement, David has found his passion. It is a fascinating sociological case study, representing one of the longest violent social movements on record. The conflict also presents an unparalleled opportunity to study the effectiveness of various mediation and negotiation methods in the peace process. In light of this David has begun to pursue studies of conflict resolution, negotiation, and mediation through coursework, conferences and internships. This summer, David plans to travel to Singapore to intern with Tufts alum Keith Fitzgerald, founder of Sea-Change Partners. There, he will attend conflict and crisis management workshops. He also hopes to travel to India, to the city of Tamil Nadu, as well as Sri Lanka, with Mr. Fitzgerald. In South Asia, David will conduct interviews and gain invaluable first-hand knowledge of the conflict, to enhance his understanding of the movement and help him begin to define an independent research project on violent social movements. David looks forward to continuing his studies of conflict sociology and negotiation techniques. Specifically, David (is excited about) analyzing the impact that violence and mediation have on the success or failure of a movement to achieve its goals.
Mae-ling Lokko
Mae-ling is currently pursuing a major in Architecture and an interdisciplinary minor in Africa in the New World. Being of Ghanaian-Filipino heritage, her endeavors at Tufts aim towards exploring and transcending borders between cultures and responding to them through architectural studies and projects.
Her passion for architecture lead to her exploration of traditional and vernacular Asian and African design. In the summer of 2006, she launched an art exhibition of her architectural works under the theme "Hybrid" at the Shangrila Hotel in Accra, Ghana. Her work explored the contrasts and commonplace between the architecture of the capital cities of Accra and Manila and pathways of architectural innovation influenced by global art movements and the changes taking place in the local environment. She is deeply interested in how traditional architecture can fuse with outside influences through hybrid process of innovation, resourcefulness and sustainability. This interest led to her founding of The Uzuri Project, a landscape design program in her boarding school in Ghana in 2005 and through the Synaptic Scholar program was revived, redesigned and built. Outside her architectural works, Mae-ling possesses a passion for the performance arts where she derives inspiration and insight into various cultures. Her active participation in drama led to a full scholarship to the Philippine School of the Arts in 2000 which she eventually turned down in light of moving to Ghana, West Africa.
In summer of 2007, working with Tufts professor Jayanthi Mistry under a grant by the Tisch College, Mae-ling documented the experiences of multicultural youth the greater Boston area as part of Mistry's thesis on "Navigating Between Multiple Cultural Worlds". Her interviews and meetings with these numerous and diverse interviewees gave her deeper insight into the complexity and patterns in the development of self-identity in multicultural youth.
At Tufts, she served as 2007-2008 president of the African Student's Organization, Committee Outreach member of the Emerging Black Leaders, and was involved in the Filipino Cultural Society, Multiracial Organization of Student's, Irish Dance Club and the Asian American Society. Beyond Tufts, her involvement with Emergency beginning in 2007, a nonprofit healthcare organization that provides quality health care for victims of poverty and war, have become a source of inspiration and respect for the power of collaboration and transcending global borders.
Mae-ling studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London during her Junior Year Abroad and interned last summer with Joe Addo Studio, one of Africa’s leading architects. During which she did a documentary with Joe Addo on the nature of African urban growth which was shown at the Annual ArchiAfrika conference in Pretoria. Currently she is working on her Seniors Honors Thesis that aims to understand urban growth in Ghana on an intimate scale through the evolution of the Ghanaian household and its architecture. Having lived in various countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and America, meeting new people and engaging in different experiences through travel remains an undying passion for her.
Margaret O'Connor
Throughout her undergraduate career Margaret has been challenged by finding ways to integrate her intellectual interests in global public health, health politics, comparative politics, the greater Middle East, and ethics. As a senior, she has incorporated many of these interests in a research project focusing on medical education and ethics. The primary research was conducted during a New Initiative for Middle East Peace (NIMEP) fact-finding mission to Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates in January 2010, with a forthcoming paper to be published in NIMEP’s journal, Insights.
Before designing this capstone project, Margaret pursued her interests in health and comparative politics in broader ways. During her sophomore year, Margaret joined ALLIES (the Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services). ALLIES is an inter-collegiate organization aimed at improving civil-military relations at the undergraduate level, which was began at the IGL in 2006. On the ALLIES Joint Research Project in 2008, she lived and researched alongside students from the US Naval Academy and US Military Academy, exploring the impacts of the Iraq War on Jordan’s political reforms. This project convinced Margaret of the necessity of understanding between civilian and military leaders to any effective foreign policy work. Her increased involvement in ALLIES led to an internship during the summer of 2009 at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at National Defense University in Washington, DC. Now a senior, Margaret is co-chair of the Tufts ALLIES chapter.
In addition to her involvement at the IGL, Margaret has served as a writing tutor for the past two years; her paper on incentivizing health care providers to enter performance-based payment systems was published in the fall 2008 issue of TuftScope: Tufts’ Interdisciplinary Journal of Health, Ethics, and Policy; as a sophomore she participated in Ghana Gold, a corporate social responsibility study tour and colloquium examining gold mining in Ghana; she has also held several other internships in her hometown of Cincinnati and the communities surrounding Tufts.
After graduating in May 2010, Margaret plans to continue her work through Tufts’ combined BA/MPH program to earn her graduate degree in public health through a fifth year of study.
Duncan Pickard
Duncan Pickard is a senior majoring in History. He is interested in transnational approaches to history and anthropology, with particular focus on human rights as a framework for cross-cultural dialogue and diaspora communities in the United States. He is writing a senior honors thesis on African slavery in colonial Peru, and is engaged in research on human rights reporting in Syria and the Arab-American experience.
Duncan has conducted fieldwork in the Dominican Republic and Peru for his thesis. He also researched USAID programs in rural Jordan while studying Arabic in Amman, and this summer he worked as an intern at the American Embassy in Damascus, Syria.
Duncan is immediate past TCU president and currently is a student representative to the Tufts Board of Trustees. He is also a Citizenship and Public Service Scholar at the Tisch College where this year he is working with the Somerville Human Rights Commission on a city-wide marketing campaign. Duncan is from Oak Bluffs, Mass., on the island of Martha's Vineyard.
Talya Peltzman
Talya Peltzman is a Senior double majoring in Community Health and Sociology. She is interested in the interface of disease and society and specifically in questions of how effective health policies and practices can be implemented in accordance with social needs. In particular, Talya's research focuses on immigrant health and disparity elimination in both documented and undocumented US immigrant populations. Currently she is writing her senior thesis on the topic of how Massachusetts' health reform has affected immigrant communities in Massachusetts. This research is being conducted in coordination with Harvard Catalyst and the Institute for Community Health where Talya holds an Internship as a Research Intern.
Talya first became interested in the field of immigrant health when, after her Freshman year, she worked as a translator and research assistant for the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois in Chicago. This project was aimed at increasing effective diabetes prevention programs in Spanish Speaking immigrants on Chicago's South Side and encouraged Talya to continue exploring immigrant communities and the complex social and political structures that shape their lives.
After her Sophomore year Talya was awarded a grant from Tufts University to explore this question through self guided research on US immigration health policies. Through this opportunity Talya developed a critical analysis of the US HIV Ban which she submitted to the International Centre for Migration and Health in Geneva, Switzerland in a proposal to continue this research at their center under Dr. Manuel Carballo, a former Chief Public Health Advisor for the United Nations. Talya's proposal was accepted and, during the spring of her Junior year, she traveled to Switzerland, interviewing officials from the WHO and IOM, to produce an topical report for the ICMH on comparative international immigration health policies.
When she returned home, Talya began a summer position at the Massachusetts Department of Health in the Office of Primary Care, under the programs' director, Julia Dyck. This positions built Talya's interest in state-level and local politics, which she is now incorporating in her thesis work, and hopes to pursue through a Master's Degree in Public Health and career in Public Health Policy. In her free time Talya plays on the Tufts J.V. Soccer Team and enjoys training for marathons. She also enjoys hiking and skiing with Tufts Mountain Club. She is from Chicago, Illinois.
Austin Siadak
Austin hails from the beautiful city of Seattle, Washington, where he lives with his mom, younger brother, golden retriever, and two wonderful cats. He is currently a senior at Tufts, majoring in International Relations with a focus on International Conflict, Cooperation and Justice. He had the privilege of attending private schools in the Seattle area and still credits much of his passion for learning and discovery to the remarkable and inspiring faculty at Seattle Preparatory School. In particular, his love for history, politics, and international relations was born and nurtured in the context of September 11th and the Iraq War during his junior and senior history classes where he learned to constantly question and inquire, never taking anything at face value.
At Tufts, Austin is involved in a myriad of groups that reflect his widespread interests. Along with being a Synaptic Scholar he was member of 2007-2008 EPIIC Colloquium on Global Poverty and Inequality, has been co-chair of the Refugee and IDP Committee for Pangea, an on campus group that promotes education and awareness of global issues, is a core member of the Tufts Buddhist Sangha, is music director for the on-campus street percussion group B.E.A.T.S, and is actively engaged with the Tufts Mountain Club. He has traveled to rural Honduras twice with other Tufts students to work on sustainable agriculture projects and spent his junior year studying abroad in Santiago, Chile and traveling all over South America.
Austin is deeply interested in international politics, conflict issues, and in particular, many of the current debates surrounding weak and failing states. He is passionate about the intertwining relationships between natural resources, conflict, and development, and wants to develop a better understanding of how poor states rich in natural resources can avoid many of the traditional "traps" that have left them seemingly impervious to development. Stemming from his participation in the 2007-2008 EPIIC Colloquium on Global Poverty and Inequality, he is particularly interested in the political economy of civil conflict. He is also fascinated by illicit and informal economies, especially in developing and weak states, and wants to research how rebel groups and armed factions use shadow networks and illicit international trade through informal economies to fund their actions, especially when they do so through the use of natural resources such as diamonds, timber, or drugs. Another of his major interests surrounds the social, political, and economic differences between authoritarian and democratic states and, in particular, the process of transition to democratic systems of government and the factors that allow some states to become/stay democratic while others remain controlled by overbearing dictators or warlords.
Additionally, the global food system and its social, economic and environmental effects have become of greater interest to Austin over the past two years. Austin’s final EPIIC research paper on the 2007-2008 global food crisis was published as the lead article in the Spring 2009 issue of Discourse, in which he analyzed the crisis’ complex causes and its effects on the poor. Deeply concerned with the environmentally harmful effects of the majority of U.S. food production, especially those involved in the meat and dairy industries, Austin has been a vegan for nearly a year and regularly advocates for a more sustainable food system.
Outside of class Austin enjoys spending his time reading, meditating, playing drums, having thoughtful discussions with his close friends and thinking about his place and purpose in the world. His happiest and most memorable days are spent outdoors, whether hiking, camping, or rock and ice climbing. Growing up in Washington State, Austin developed a deep love for the majestic beauty and solitude of mountains, forests, and rivers, and tries to get away from the city to unwind as much as possible with his brother and friends. He recently completed a 100 mile solo hike in the North Cascade mountain range this past summer and considers among his greater accomplishments the ability to have spent nearly 200 nights outside in the past two years.
Austin remains decidedly undecided about his post-graduation plans, but experts predict the coming year will likely find him traveling the western United States chasing good rock and ice as a climbing bum until his dwindling bank account forces him back into the real world.
Kelsi Stine
This year, Kelsi joins the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy as a first year Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy student through a 5 year BA/MALD program. She is pursuing concentrations in International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution and Human Security, emphasizing issues of corruption and governance, particular regarding poverty alleviation and post-conflict societies. Outside of the classroom, Kelsi is a Staff Editor for Praxis, the Fletcher School’s journal of Human Security, and co-coordinates the Fletcher Global Women’s Mentor Program.
As a Tufts undergraduate, Kelsi is pursuing a double major in International Relations and Peace and Justice Studies. This past March, Kelsi led a joint Fletcher/undergraduate student research group from the Institute for Global Leadership’s Poverty and Power Research Initiative (PPRI), a student group she co-founded in 2007, on a trip to the Philippines to looking at the relationship between extreme oligarchy and extreme poverty. This interest developed out of Kelsi’s participation in the 2007/2008 Education for Public Policy and International Citizenship (EPIIC) student colloquium on "Global Poverty and Inequality”, which gave her the opportunity to work with IGL Inspire Fellow Jose Maria Argueta conducting similar research in Guatemala. In 2008, she travelled twice with a team of EPIIC students to conduct research in Guatemala, and returned to co-author a findings paper which has been cited by the US Millennium Challenge Corporation, a new foreign aid institution.
In the fall of 2008, Kelsi lived throughout South Africa while participating in a race studies program through the School for International Training. During this time, Kelsi spent a month in Durban working with a local environmental and social justice NGO examining the community health impacts of industry pollution and climate change. While in South Africa, she also worked with the Project on Justice in Times of Transition (PJTT) on their South Africa case study for the forthcoming multimedia project, Talking with the Enemy.
Kelsi was also privileged to intern at the Crisis Management Initiative private diplomacy group in Helsinki, Finland in the summer of 2008. At CMI, she planned and organized a seminar on statebuilding in Africa, building off her experience both in EPIIC and in volunteering in Ghana at a Liberian refugee camp the previous year.
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