News, Events and Photos
Alumni and Student Stories
Alumni Stories
Field Museum News
Alumni Stories
Rebeccah Sanders ('98) is currently serving as the Interim Executive Director of the Chicago Cultural Alliance (CCA), a consortium of Chicago area 25 ethnic museums, cultural centers, and historical societies partnered with many of Chicago’s larger institutions. The only type of its organization in the United States, the CCA works to promote social change and public understanding of cultural diversity through the first voice perspectives of Chicago’s ethnic communities. Prior to joining the CCA, Rebeccah worked as the Executive Director of the International Business Council (IBC), a non-profit organization with a mission of promoting peace through commerce. Previous to this, Rebeccah taught Anthropology for the University of Maryland’s campus in Sicily. She also worked as the Post-Secondary Coordinator of Maine’s GEAR UP program, a federal education program, where several of her programs served Maine’s Native American populations and its refugee populations. She currently resides in Chicago with her husband and two young children. Her new website: www.rebeccahsandersphotography.com (11/2008)
Jenny Stahl ('03) spent a year after graduation in Denver with the Colorado Vincentian Volunteer program, working at a preschool for kids with special needs and typical children. She then returned to archaeology in a Master's program at the University of Tulsa. Jenny wrote a thesis on flintknapping and personality, and had the chance to return to Jordan for a PPNB excavation. After graduating in 2007 with her masters, she was hired on full time as a staff archaeologist at Metcalf Archaeological Consultants, Inc. in Denver, Colorado. She serves as a crew chief in the field and aslithics lab manager during the winter season. She loves living and working in the West and plans on continuing there for many years to come. (10/2008)
Noelle Easterday ('06) reports that since August 2006, she has been teaching conversational English in South Korea under a Fulbright grant. Although the typical Fulbright ETA teaches for one year, she extended her grant twice! This grant year, in addition to teaching high school girls in Seoul, she is also the ETA Program Coordinator and works directly with the Korean-American Educational Commission. She encourages you to visit Korea and try the kimchi! (12/2008)
Stephanie Cheng ('06) reports that she is studying traditional Tibetan medicine in Qinghai (Amdo Tibetan region). It's been really interesting learning about this fascinating health system and learning about Tibetan culture. Her boyfriend (another first year medical student) and Stephanie created a blog: www.stephanieandmikeinchina2008.blogspot.com if you're interested! (7/2008)
Colleen Walsh Lang ('07) married Edward A. Lang (Ed) on July 11, 2008. The ceremony took place in St. Joseph's Church in Chicago and the reception was at the Chicago Cultural Center. In March 2008, she started working at the University of Chicago as a reesarch associate doing medical ethics research under the diretion of Dr. Lainie Ross, MD, PhD. who is an associate director at the MacLean Center of Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago. Colleen is still deciding on future plans for graduate school. (10/2008)
Elizabeth Elliott ('08) is very busy at UCD in Dublin pursuing a graduate degree in archaeology. She says: "I have been elected "MA Class Representative", so now I can have a good forum to build better community between the Professors, Masters Students, and PhDs. I am thinking of organizing a goat roast or a student-faculty potluck. In other news, I started taking an Irish language course so I could pronounce some of the names and places in Dublin, and I also am going to have my own radio show on the student radio station, Belfield FM, playing rap music of all things." (11/2008)
Tony Pomales ('08) reports that he has started graduate school in anthropology at the University of Iowa. Please send him an email at Irishalum2006@yahoo.com. (11/2008)
Field Museum Report
Two recent graduates of the anthropology department were awarded department-sponsored summer internships with the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Kyle Bocinsky and Stephanie Brauer spent 10 weeks working under Dr. Scott Demel, head of the collections management department at the FMNH. While there, Kyle and Stephanie had leadership positions in numerous department projects.
One of their primary responsibilities was to assist visiting researchers working with the museum’s vast collections. One team of researchers – a collaborative group from Northwestern, Loyola, and the University of Illinois – was creating a forensic catalog of several hundred sets of human remains collected by previous museum curators. Age, sex, and skeletal inventory had to be completed for each set of remains; this information will then be submitted to the National NAGPRA NIC and CUI databases. Kyle and Stephanie were responsible for designing the method of inventory recording for the project, and overseeing the storage, transport, and analysis of remains. Neither student had any osteological background, but the researchers invested in training them, so that by their second week, they were active in every step of the project. Thanks to their involvement, both students left the Field with a generally working knowledge of the human skeletal system, experience with identifying evidence of pathology, and a respect for the patience and attention to detail demanded in forensic archaeology.
Another ongoing project that Kyle and Stephanie played an integral role in was the analysis, description, and cataloging of a large collection of materials recently accessioned by the Museum. These came from the excavation of a shipwreck in the Java Sea with recovered materials dating to the 11th-12th centuries. Kyle and Stephanie helped transport the artifacts from temporary storage to the analysis lab, assigned a temporary catalog number to each object, and described them, entering the description and ID information into an electronic database. The collection as a whole consists of nearly 10,000 artifacts – primarily ceramics – from throughout Southeast Asia, including green-glazed ceramics manufactured in southeast China, earthenware from India, and numerous items from Indonesia and other vital hubs of maritime trade in the region. Needless to say, Kyle and Stephanie made a minor – yet important! – dent in the recording of this fascinating collection.
Now that the summer is over, Kyle and Stephanie are beginning the next phases of their careers. Kyle will begin graduate study in archaeology at Washington State University this fall. Stephanie will be working for the Center for the Homeless in South Bend. We look forward to hearing more about their future accomplishments.
The Field Museum Internship started in 2002 with a generous endowment from the Kauffman family. One to two interns have been chosen each year. Applications are due in late January. Click here for complete details.