Oberlin Alumni Magazine

Oberlin is well represented among the ranks of college students to win major national fellowships this year.

May 2005 graduates Nancy Nguyen and Tobias Smith, who each landed Fulbright research grants, will study in Asia this coming year—Nguyen in Vietnam and Smith in Shanghai—expanding projects they began during summers and winter terms abroad.

Fulbright Teaching Fellowships will allow five new graduates to teach English and study abroad: Susan Albright and Lidia Arshavsky in France; Monica Lee in Berlin; and Annelies Fryberger and Reginald Patterson in Guadeloupe.

In both the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and Goldwater Scholarship competitions, Oberlin enjoyed a clean sweep. Javits—which made just two awards to music students this year—chose May graduates Ross Karre, a percussion performance major, and Michael Bukhman, a piano performance major, to each receive more than $41,000 a year for four years as they work toward doctorates in musical arts.

In the Goldwater Scholarship competition, four Oberlin undergraduates—the maximum number of nominees from any one school—were singled out for their accomplishments in science and mathematics. Rising seniors Loren Andreas and Leslie Dowell, along with juniors Wendy Everett and Hugh Churchill, were among 320 winners chosen from an applicant pool of 1,091.

“Every year this competition becomes more difficult, so having four students from any one school receive this award is truly an extraordinary feat,” says Gerald Smith, president of the Barry M. Goldwater Foundation.

The Watson Fellowship, which funds a year of independent study and travel abroad, was awarded to May graduates Erika Kulnys-Brain, a double-degree major in composition and creative writing, and Elvira Miller, an English major. Both will pursue projects related to folk music—Kulnys-Brain on the role of folk music in social change in Puerto Rico, Brazil, South Africa, and India, and Miller in studying the accordion in folk music and dance communities.

News of the various awards, which reached campus throughout the spring semester, followed the announcement last fall that May graduate Mary Larew had earned one of the highest accolades a U.S. undergraduate can obtain: Great Britain’s Marshall Scholarship. Larew, a Conservatory composition major, will pursue a master’s degree in vocal studies at the University of York, with an emphasis on early singing techniques.

The Big Cram: At 1 a.m. on the first day of finals week, the sounds of clicking keyboards in MUDD’s A-level computer lab were intense. Students spent hours in the library, typing papers and preparing for exams that counted for much of their final grades. Although the atmosphere was hairy, most students were persuaded to leave their study zones, giving in to the wafting aromas of popcorn and pizza—or even a free Frisbee—provided by such campus organizations as the Safety and Security office and the Multicultural Resource Center.

A new solar parking pavilion, scheduled for completion this fall, will not only attract motorists seeking protection from the elements, but should enable the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environ-mental Studies to annually produce more electricity than it consumes, making it the largest photovoltaic-run building among colleges and universities in the country. Support for the project comes from a $1 million grant from the family of Adam J. Lewis.

“The Lewis Center will go from being an importer of electricity to a net exporter of electricity on an annual basis,” says Associate Professor John Petersen, who estimates that the new and existing PV arrays will produce about 30 percent more electricity than the Lewis Center consumes on an annual basis.

More than 3,500 square feet of PV panels cover the roof of the existing Lewis Center. More than 330 additional PV panels will top the new 8,800-square-foot pavilion, which will cover an existing parking lot.

Director of Environmental Studies David Orr says the pavilion will bring the center’s total rated energy production, based on peak theoretical output under ideal conditions, to 160 kW—which more than triples its current power. That’s equivalent, he says, to the energy needed to power nearly 15 single-family homes. “When Oberlin’s pavilion is finished, it will be the first time any college or university has had an academic facility that is truly photovoltaic energy self-reliant,” says Steven Strong, designer of the PV array and solar pavilion. “The beauty is that it’s a win-win situation.”

A win for the College and for the City of Oberlin, which will benefit from surplus energy exported from the Lewis Center into the municipality’s grid.

Orr, who recognized the learning potential posed by the pavilion, asked students in his ecological design class to come up with alternatives to Strong’s design. Ideas ranged from a portable greenhouse with PV cells to a PV tree sculpture. “It was an in-spiring project,” says Rachel Auerback ’05. “But in the end we decided that Strong’s design was sound, particularly since it would not take up valuable green space.”