student research issue
Come Back to Texas: Student’s Journey Begins, Ends in Lone Star State Jerika Jordan ’14 has had one intention all along: to use her leadership skills to help others. During high school, she was sure she would achieve this goal by becoming a social worker. But, a senior project—similar to the ones done in many high schools that ask students to compare and contrast two careers—changed her mind. As she studied careers, Jordan had begun to daydream about the science centers, zoos, and museums her mother had taken her to as a child. To dive into museum studies at Juniata, Jordan moved from Lakeway, Texas, halfway across the country, after reading online that the Juniata College Museum of Art collection includes a Rembrandt etching. Her dream of seeing that etching would soon come true, but other wishes—ones she didn’t even know she had yet—would also become real as she added experience upon experience until, not unlike an Impressionist painting, a final image emerged. For her senior capstone project, Jordan, Shelby Miller ’15, of Pottstown, N.Y., and Karen Rosell, professor of art history, are writing and publishing a catalogue on Juniata’s Worth B. Stottlemyer Collection, a collection of nearly 500 objects that include miniatures, Asian prints, works from the Hudson River School, Old Masters and modernists like James Whistler. Jordan and Miller were hand-picked by Rosell to help write the catalog, which will allow alumni, prospective students, faculty, current students and the public to view, study and enjoy the collection through the printed catalog. Jordan’s experience—which combines her knowledge of art history, curation, marketing, and leadership skills—has resulted in 19 catalog entries written on specific collection works of art as well as a chapter introduction. Together, these skills paint a beautiful picture on her resume, which caught the eye of a familiar museum, where she’s headed next. In fact, it’s not too far from her Texas home. This summer, Jordan will intern at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She hopes to help in the outreach department of HMFA, saying, “One of the things that has stuck with me from my museum studies course is that it is imperative that kids have museum experiences by age five. This will determine if they visit museums as adults.” In other words, generations of kids who benefit from Jordan’s museum efforts—whether she ends up as a curator or outreach coordinator—will be glad that her mom took her to meander past Monets as a child. “I’m so glad my mom took me there,” Jordan says. “I can’t imagine life without museums.” By Genna Welsh Kasun ’06
Juniata
Growth Industry: An Overstuffed Food System? No one can accuse Ally Lush ’14 of thinking small. Inspired by an internship at an organic food market and studyabroad experiences in The Gambia and Ecuador, the international studies POE created an in-depth analysis of how market values affect the global food system. Specifically, the Spring Mills, Pa. student is interested in the morality of creating a global food system dominated by agribusiness giants churning out processed foods, genetically modified crops and seeds, and industrial-scale marketing programs. “When you commodify a product, you take away its original meaning,” she explains. “When you put a price on an ear of corn, it’s 38
By John Wall
no longer just corn, but also corn syrup, corn chips and other products made from corn as a commodity.” In her capstone research paper, Lush argues that the morality of installing a global agricultural food production system and expecting everyone to toe the line of large-scale food production is, at its center, ill-advised. “Is it fair for us to set up a system worldwide that is not sustainable in the long run and puts a lot of power in the hands of a few corporations?’ Lush asks. As she wrote in her report, “To address these issues, we should engage in food and agriculture policy discussions at the international, national and local level.”
Lush, an international studies POE, would like to have a seat at the table in any of these discussions if she gets the opportunity. Her passion for food equity was inspired by a summer job at a local company, Pennsylvania Certified Organic, where she saw consumers were willing to pay a few cents more for food grown on small-scale farms. She was further informed by spending the 2012 spring semester in The Gambia seeing how small-scale peanut farmers were affected by global food prices. In addition, another trip abroad in spring 2013 to Ecuador revealed how “food sovereignty,” or the right for a country to produce food sustainably and to define