Six UNC students will explore the world this summer as 2008 Burch Fellows, working on exciting projects of their own design — from camping in the High Arctic to investigating an English folk legend to teaching acrobatics and drama in Tanzania, among other adventures.
Each summer, the Burch Fellowships provide up to $6,000 each in competitive fellowships for up to six students to pursue off-campus study experiences that highlight their passionate interests.
The program, in the College of Arts and Sciences, was established in 1993 by a gift from 1963 Carolina graduate Lucius E. Burch III of Nashville, Tenn. Burch’s gift also supports the Burch Field Research Seminars, which showcase the relationship between faculty research and undergraduate education by combining coursework with active, experiential learning.
This year’s fellows are Zena Cardman of Williamsburg, Va.; Will Halicks of Peachtree City, Ga.; Kaitlin Houlditch-Fair of Ellensboro, N.C.; Lauren Teegarden of Lake Oswego, Ore.; Jonathan Toledo of Sylva, N.C.; and Sam Wurzelmann of Chapel Hill, N.C.
Cardman, a sophomore biology major and poetry minor, is an aspiring astronaut and astrobiologist. She is interested in studying Earth’s most extreme environments, with the hopes of gaining insight into the origins of life in this solar system. Cardman will use her Burch Fellowship this summer to pursue astrobiological field work.
She will be journeying with a team of scientists to the High Arctic. They will first travel to Pavilion Lake in British Columbia, to study the formation of unusual sedimentary structures called microbialites. Microbialites are models of Precambrian reefs, and provide clues into possible carbonate formation in ancient lakes on Mars. From there, the team will proceed to Devon Island, the largest uninhabited island on Earth. Camping under the perpetual daylight of the frigid Arctic summer, she will be collecting data to help characterize the lakes surrounding the enormous Haughton Impact Crater. Cardman will chronicle her adventures for publication, and hopes to use the experience as a launch pad for a life of astrobiological research.
Halicks, a junior English major, has an interest in creative writing and folklore. He will use his Burch Fellowship to travel to England to study the folk legend of the Black Dog, an apparition that is said to haunt churchyards and lonely roads and is often seen as an omen of death.
To gain an understanding of how the story has influenced England’s culture, he will spend the first part of the fellowship visiting areas where Black Dog lore has made a rich contribution to local life and tradition. He will talk to experts who study and collect stories from all corners of England, consult a collection of Black Dog papers at Exeter’s university library, and interview several people who claim to have seen the Black Dog. He will also study the economic face of the legend by talking to the owners of establishments across England that use the Black Dog as an icon. During the remainder of the summer, Halicks will create a documentary film about the Black Dog’s impact on English society that he will share when he returns to UNC.
Houlditch-Fair, a junior dramatic art major, will use her Burch Fellowship to travel to Moshi, Tanzania, to work as an assistant acrobatics instructor at the TunaHAKI Centre for Street Children. Her goal is to study the way TunaHAKI, known for its focus on acrobatics and drama, promotes the physical and social development of the resident children, and to explore the host culture’s venues for narratives and practices to bring back to Chapel Hill.
During her stay she will also take traditional West African dance lessons from a local school leader and help create a dance program at the Second Chance Education Center, a school for children who failed to excel in primary school national exams. By the end of her two months, she hopes to combine these projects by holding a performance with the children from TunaHAKI and SCEC. Upon her return to UNC in the fall, Houlditch-Fair will continue volunteering at the Franklin Porter Graham Childcare Institute by incorporating a new African dance program.
Teegarden, a sophomore Latin American Studies and Spanish major, will spend the summer studying international migration and the transnational preservation of indigenous culture. After spending time in the Yucatán capital of Mérida, she will travel extensively in the peninsula and research the recent and increasing Mayan migration from the Yucatán to San Francisco, Calif., and Portland, Ore.
Additionally, Teegarden will study the indigenous language, Yucatec Mayan, and experience traditional Mayan cultural, religious, and culinary practices. She will conduct interviews both in the Yucatán Peninsula and in the United States with migrants and their families to explore both the use of international social networks as well as consider the distinctions between indigenous and Latino migrant communities. Teegarden will return to UNC with oral histories in a combination of English, Spanish, and Yucatec Mayan that describe the experiences of the Mayan migrant community.
Toledo, a junior physics major, will journey to Spain, where he will study special cases of graphene systems under Professor Maria Vozmediano of the Institute for Materials Science in Madrid. Graphene is the two-dimensional form of graphite in the sense that graphite is formed when several layers of graphene are stacked upon one another in a specific way.
Graphene has recently become an object of intense theoretical interest due to the relations between its exotic properties and phenomena familiar to seemingly estranged areas of physics, as well as its promise for use in nanoscale electronic devices. While at the Institute, Toledo will study graphene systems in which curvature has been introduced to the lattice structure, an area in which professor Vozmendiano is an expert and a pioneer. Toward the conclusion of his project, Toledo will travel to Camerino, Italy, to attend the International Conference on Strongly Coupled Coulomb Systems, where graphene will be a centerpiece of discussion.
Wurzelmann, a sophomore environmental health major, will first spend a week at a language immersion school in La Paz, Bolivia. Then he will spend 10 weeks at the San Miguel del Bala eco-lodge in the Amazon rainforest studying green globalization and working with the Tacana Indian indigenous community.
Inspired by the book Whispering in the Giant’s Ear by William Powers, Wurzelmann will research how economic forces have shaped the lives of the Tacana community that runs the eco-lodge. At the same time, he will work with community members on various endeavors at the lodge to help improve its marketability. These efforts include improving English services offered by the lodge and bringing solar power to the lodge through the Bolivian based NGO, Khana Wayra. Upon his return to UNC, Wurzelmann will use his experience as a foundation for his studies as he enters the Environmental Health program.
