Basecamp to the World

Passionate, committed, and selfless only begin to describe Tinotenda “Tino” Kuretu ’22, a student leader and social justice advocate who strives to work at the intersection of economic development and global health. From a young age, Tino began to wonder why some people die from easily treatable diseases like cholera and malaria while others thrive. “I was always intrigued by that question and how I could answer it,” Tino says. “Studying economic development has helped me understand how I can find solutions—and also how the global health field can help me reimagine how healthcare works in my home country of Zimbabwe.”

Tino was attracted to Dartmouth because of the abundance of research opportunities for undergraduates and began his own research on molecular biology and drug discovery in the summer following his first year. As a sophomore, he began researching policy interventions for low-value care in the U.S. thanks to an E.E. Just Undergraduate Research Fellowship. The two-year award is designed to increase the number of underrepresented students at Dartmouth who choose to enter a STEM doctoral program after graduation.

Given his interests, it’s perhaps not surprising that Tino is also a budding social entrepreneur. He notes that one of his all-time favorite classes, “The Economics of Governments and Public Policy,” taught him about the many ways that education and healthcare can be accessed, which sparked his interest in social entrepreneurship. His first entrepreneurial venture was a result of a visit to nearby Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where he experienced firsthand the challenges of navigating healthcare settings in a country where most healthcare professionals do not share his first language.

With the help of a $23,000 award from the Verizon and Clinton Global Initiative 2021 Social Innovation Challenge, Tino launched Macaw, an app that connects healthcare workers and patients with translators to allow them to communicate between any two languages in real time. “You can think of Macaw as the Uber of translation,” Tino says. “The app aims to fill the vacuum of the many languages that are underrepresented in translation services.”

Outside the classroom, Tino keeps busy as an executive board member of Dartmouth Coalition for Global Health and as a cofounder of the Sadie Alexander Organization, a student group dedicated to supporting underrepresented students in economics. Following graduation, he will begin work as an analyst at a healthcare consulting firm in Boston—but in the future, he envisions himself returning to his home country to work at the intersection of economic development and global health. His Dartmouth education has forged the path to that return. “I wanted to be at a place where my colleagues and professors would push me to change my way of thinking, and I can confidently say that Dartmouth’s academic rigor and freedom have made me change the way I think— not only as an intellectual but as a person.” —Sydney Wuu ’24

basecamp world to the

IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM, YOUR DARTMOUTH EXPERIENCE CAN CROSS INTELLECTUAL AND INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARIES.

25 ’ PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER LARSON / EYEEM PHOTOGRAPH OF TINO BY DANIEL XU admissions.dartmouth.edu | 21

MARY COFFEY

PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY AFFILIATED FACULTY, LATIN AMERICAN, LATINO, AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES PROGRAM

When taking a class with Professor Mary Coffey, expect to visit The Epic of American Civilization, a sprawling twenty-four panel mural and National Historic Landmark painted in the 1930s by Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco.

Dartmouth’s resident expert on the mural, Professor Coffey describes the priceless artwork installed in Baker Library’s Orozco room as “expansive in its sense of time, geography, and history.” To Coffey, the genius of Orozco’s mural is hinted at in its title. “He’s reorienting the narrative of American history. His mural shifts the axis entirely from an east/west axis to a south/north one.” Its contrasting panels are rich with “radical moments of possibility,” painting a history of North America rooted in Mesoamerican civilizational achievements and their legacies.

Professor Coffey’s interest in the social, political, and economic roles of art inspired her to study modern Mexican visual art in graduate school. “Growing up in Indiana, I was about as far from Mexico as one can be, psychologically, intellectually, and to some extent geographically.” A visit to a local Latin American art exhibit changed everything. “It was one of those powerful moments where you have this profound sense of your own ignorance, just at a time in your life where you think you’re starting to become smart about something.”

Professor Coffey’s training as a modernist and Latin Americanist is instrumental in her teaching. “I don’t come at the teaching of American art from within the tradition of American art historiography, but rather from a different tradition, Latin American art historiography, which makes me see the art in a different way. Questions about Mexican art historical traditions, race and nation, development, politics—those things have always informed the way I teach.” Professor Coffey also finds enormous value in the perspectives of her students, several of whom are cited by name in her book Orozco’s American Epic: Myth, History, and the Melancholy of Race. “My thinking about the mural was utterly transformed by my students, by the questions they ask, by the way they interact with the mural.”

Orozco’s reorientation of the Western civilization narrative “is an inducement for us to do the same thing. As we move through the mural, we relearn our own history, rethink our assumptions about progress and civilization, and walk away from the mural potentially transformed by that radical re-education.” Professor Coffey’s research culminates in “a teaching that’s all about undoing the story that we’ve been told about what the history of America is, and in that regard, it is very much a continuation of what Orozco’s doing in his mural.”

Orozco’s mural has as much to offer Dartmouth now as it did in 1934. “It’s an object that reminds us that this college has many histories,” she says. “Feeling like you belong at an institution has a lot to do with where or how you see your personal story intersecting with the institution’s history and values.” —Estelle Stedman ’23

Mural

Mural Musings

Pictured: In the Orozco Room in Baker Library