Summer Enrichment Part 1, with Dhrusti Patel, Albert Hu, Ash-girl Chapfuwa, and Jodi Hyman
Every summer, USP upperclasspeople have the opportunity to apply for funding to go do Interesting Things. When they get back, they present their experiences to the rest of the program. These are the summer enrichment reports for four of our members, presented in liveblog format.
7:20 Introductions around the room; today’s theme is, naturally, “What I did this summer”
7:31 We unplug microphones until the feedback stops
7:35 Dhrusti Patel is an environmental policy major and premed. She spent her summer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
7:37 She’s also been studying abroad in India (traditional birthing practices) like it ain’t no thang.
7:38 You can find your destiny via Google (or at least find your destiny’s contact information).
7:39 Specifically, Dhrusti was evaluating the effect of the basic Minimum health service policy on reproductive health in Afghanistan
7:41 “Health policy is often fragmented in post-conflict countries.” We have an early contender for Understatement of the Evening.
7:42 These policies often focus on cities and leave rural areas un/underserved.
7:44 Murphy’s Law strikes and the project is changed to a systematic literature review. Then Murphy’s Law unstrikes and the original project (correlating information from interviews) returns. Huzzah!
7:46 Manual encoding for themes in interviews takes a long time.
7:47 Lessons learned: How to do research in a way that will actually sway policy makers.
7:49 Recommendation for future students: Find programs with well-defined roles for you to play.
7:54 Western scientists hate puny anecdotes! RARG! SMASH!
7:56 We do the microphone shuffle.
7:59 Albert Hu is a junior BME (BioMedical Engineer) who spent his summer working on microfinance projects at a credit union in Uganda.
8:01 Albert was recruited to the project by Jade Lamb, another Uni. Yay us!
8:02 The nascence of the program left space for exploration and perhaps a chance to leave a personal mark.
8:03 Talking to previous interns before heading to Uganda proved to be an excellent idea.
8:05 Embedded videos at Dutch angles? What has Science done!? You should watch this video yourself, it’s deserving (though if the questions at the end were any more leading they’d probably be President).
8:14 Specifically, Albert worked on an Instant Credit Medical Payment Plan to encourage early treatment and attendance at credible hospitals
8:18 He also finished up a mobile banking project from the previous year – the proliferation of cellphones is an awesome thing sometimes.
8:19 Solar stoves are hot stuff! (I’m so, so sorry.)
8:20 Albert is now looking to expand the Instant Credit Plan to another village and is looking to recruit students for next year’s trip. If you’re interested, you know who to talk to.
8:29 Ash-girl Chapfuwa is an Electrical and Computer Engineering major with a Markets and Management Certificate on the side.
8:31 She’s been doing Pratt Fellows research on a wireless heart rate and breathing monitor (separating those signals is apparently a bit of a trick) for her ECE major.
8:32 Ash-girl spent the summer in Zimbabwe, working for Edgars, a clothing retail store to get real world experience to build on her Markets & Management certificate.
8:33 She followed up a pre-existing connection to find this internship.
8:36 Specifically, she was supervising design and development of the marketing website and serving as an interface between technical and non-technical parts of the company.
8:39 The experience changed her interest from academic PhD to more hands-on and ground-level interaction. Ideally, she’d like to serve as a business IT consultant in Africa, to help businesses with their IT needs and expand IT infrastructure in Africa.
8:40 As always, the planned and intended projects have a way of changing when you least expect it, and suddenly you find yourself speed-learning web code.
8:42 Ending in the allotted time? Astonishing!
8:45 From Q+A session, it turns out that advertising methods are surprisingly universal across cultures – the same media are used in the same ways, although in Africa, the primary media is still the newspaper, as internet access (and even televisions) are more limited. Hence… Ash-girl’s desire to expand IT infrastructure.
8:48 Despite enjoying the presentations, I question my dedication to minute-level recaps. Too late now!
8:50 Jodi Hyman is a Visual Studies major who spent the summer in London at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
8:51 She was drawn here by the cosmopolitan London scene and the intersection of art and fashion. This was Jodi’s first time ever outside the United States.
8:52 Look, there in the sky! It’s abstract art! It’s a dress! It’s both!
8:53 Lots of research done, both on the business side and in the pursuit of compelling images.
8:54 FORBIDDEN! to look at actual fashion images during this research.
8:55 Summer Study Abroad courses served as an introduction to the London art community and people “living in a place of passion”.
8:56 Kitsch vs. Passion: The Artists’ War for Breadwinning
9:00 Sharing art with and learning from people of different cultures is good times.
9:01 Intervention art is art done “without permission.” See Banksy.
9:02 While Jodi was collecting cigarette butts in the street for an intervention art project, an onlooker suggested she find another hobby.
9:03 “They thought another student’s intervention art was a bomb, so we ended early that day.” O_O
9:05 Towards the end, Jodi and the other artists curated a show as a team. This was a challenge!
9:07 Also a challenge: Communicating intended display orientation to curators.
9:10 Lessons learned: Art school good, fashion “meh”. Also time spent free from the need to make art with explicit meaning was valuable.
9:15 Closing thought: Cigarette butts are the most numerically common type of litter in the world. Ew.
-CW
