is the most effective way to promote human rights and economic opportunity. Melcher hit the ground running, working 22 hours a week monitoring events in Algeria, Morocco and Guinea that could affect the outcome of elections in those countries. Such events might include anything from civil unrest to an epidemic. “The second week you are there you are producing things they use. They treated you more like a colleague than an intern. I helped meet many a deadline,” Melcher said.
point: She talks about the time President Carter patted her on the head — a gesture an 84-year-old former leader of the free world can get away with. “I told my mom that I was not going to wash my hair — ever,” she laughs.
When reviewing Melcher’s application, the Carter Center staff also was impressed with her commitment to helping others. Through Oglethorpe’s Center for Civic Engagement and the campus chapter of the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity, Melcher clocked more than 350 hours mentoring sixth graders, beautifying nature preserves and sorting donations at the Atlanta Community Food Bank. She spent two spring breaks in New Orleans gutting homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Then there is art. She traces her passion for art to the summer before her freshman year when she traveled to Bosnia and Herzegovina with a faith-based organization called OM Artslink. The group uses art as a vehicle to promote its humanitarian efforts.
Melcher credits her passion for community service to her older brother Jacob who has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. “I can still remember how much people helped my family out. The only way to respond in kind is to give the same gifts to other people,” she said. The sum of all of Melcher’s parts made her stand out at a college of standouts, Professor Kower said. “All of our students have a passion for academics. But the fact that she has the passion for academics, the passion for culture and the passion for applying that to help other people, I think that is unusual,” he said. “It is more than that she took advantage of what we had to offer. She added back by dint of her personality and by the passion that she has.” Ryan Nix ‘09 Age: 22 Hometown: McDonough, Georgia Major: Communications and Rhetoric Studies; Minor: Art Studio Where she is now: Art liaison with Faulker+Locke, an international art consulting firm based in Atlanta that serves the hospitality industry.
“I know my professors — most of them give you their cell numbers. That led me to getting an internship and that led me to getting a real job.” Meeting Ryan Nix for the first time at a Midtown Atlanta Starbucks, you quickly find she is disarming, funny and charming. The youngest of five, Nix comes across as a go-with-the-flow kind of person. Case in
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Don’t mistake Nix’s ebullience for a lack of depth. Her passions run deep. She’s passionate about Oglethorpe’s core curriculum but cringes when describing how tough it is.
While in Sarajevo, Nix painted murals on street corners, hospitals, playgrounds and other public places, drawing in locals who grabbed brushes and joined in. She has hundreds of pictures of the children she “emotionally adopted” there. “A lot of the kids were gypsies without homes and schools so they would come find us every day and play with us and help us paint. Sarajevo woke me up — it stirred my passion for art and allowed me to experience how powerful visual arts can be to a hurting mind,” she said. Oglethorpe fed that passion through course work steeped in printmaking, sculpting, drawing and art history. Nix’s Art Professor Alan Loehle, an accomplished painter who received a 2007 Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, helped her to get internships at Atlanta’s Tew Galleries and Marcia Wood Gallery. Loehle then pushed her to apply for the Carter Center’s semester-long Art Services internship where Nix spent 30 hours a week working with the private art collection of the Center and President Carter and his wife Rosalynn. Jackie Culliton, the Center’s manager of Volunteer and Art Services, was immediately impressed with Nix’s poise and background. “She had great transcripts and a good, broad mix of art history courses which suited our collection. And she had done some gallery work before,” Culliton said. She called Nix’s performance “amazing.”
“She was very dependable and detail oriented and professional. She was a great intern,” Culliton said. Ryan cataloged, installed and assisted with the appraisal of the 1,500-piece collection that includes such famous names as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Jacob Lawrence. In addition to the paintings, the collection is rich in sculpture, decorative arts and textiles. Many of the pieces were given to the Carters during their travels around the globe promoting peace and human rights. The collection is off limits to the public but Nix got to see it all. She also helped install 20 of President Carter’s own canvases that she describes as “very folk” and “fun.” Today, Nix talks wistfully about a pair of Warhol charcoals of President Carter that hung beside her desk. “That was probably my favorite part, sitting beside those Warhols,” she said. The internship, and by extension Oglethorpe, helped crystallize for Nix her future ambitions. “On a professional level, I was able to work with a private collection. That is honestly what I want to do,” she said.
Ember Melcher (left); Ryan Nix (above) Kendra Billings ‘11, an economics major from Austin, Texas, interned in the Carter Center’s development office over the summer. Callie Crabb ’10, an art history major (with minors in French and business administration) from Dublin, Ga., has been accepted for an Art Services Internship at the Carter Center for Spring 2010.