The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University have received two grants totaling $71,385 from the ASIANetwork Freeman Foundation Student-Faculty Fellows Program to support collaborative research in Asia during summer 2010. One of these grants will fund “Five Independent Undergraduate Research Projects” in Nepal. The team will be led by Dr. Gar Kellom, former executive director of the Men’s Center at SJU, and five students: Elizabeth Carroll-Anderson, Megan Kack, Jessica Najarian and Sarah Mahowald from CSB, and December 2009 CSB graduate Jamie Utzinger. Also included in the group is Kolleen Kellom, associate vice president for institutional advancement at Saint Ben’s and part of the dynamic duo of Kellom & Kellom.
We will spend five weeks of research in Nepal with a final sixth week in India for cultural education and exploration. The participating student researchers include two projects conducted by biology majors who plan to enter graduate studies in medicine and dentistry. Najarian will focus on a qualitative study of the lack of adequate understanding regarding Alzheimer’s and dementia in the Kathmandu Valley as well as outside the valley in Biratnajar and Dharan. Kack will study the socio-cultural forces that hinder the ability of Western dental practice to bring advanced dental technology to Nepal and consider strategies for alleviating this problem.
Two other projects focus upon Nepali women in villages and monasteries. Utzinger will chronicle the life stories of five women through narratives and photographic images in the Pokhara area in order to produce an image collection and photo-journal for display in selected sites in Nepal and in the CSB and SJU art gallery. Carroll-Anderson will tutor Buddhist nuns in Spanish, and conduct research on why Nepali women enter monasteries and what their current roles are in the monastic community. Her work will be included in a publication by Dr. Kellom produced shortly after their return. The fifth project focuses upon the lack of adequate instruction in art, modern art techniques and art history in the schools of Nepal. Mahowald, who is returning to Nepal for a second summer, will help design and integrate an art education curriculum for several art schools in Nepal.
On June 10 we will depart from Minneapolis to Kathmandu, Nepal with a return date of July 24.
