Volume 53 | Spring 2018
PAGE 5
Healing Foods, Living History PAGE 11
Community Outreach: Local Schools PAGE 13
The Problem is the Solution
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5 TABLE of CONTENTS 3 LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
5 HEALING FOODS, LIVING HISTORY A Southwest Studies program helps a native community create a food oasis and helps our students see themselves differently.
7 SPOTLIGHT UWC Teacher Network
15 VIEWPOINT Tobi Kellner MUWCI ’00, Credibility Gap
16 ALUMNI IMPACT AWARD
9 FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE WORLD Sal Lovallo '09, originally from Indiana, may be the youngest person to have visited every country in the world.
Leonoor “Noor” Cornelissen ’10
16 BIG HEART Tyler Davis ’97, Nonlinear Thinking and Giving
20 PEER REVIEW 27 LOOKING BACK
11 COMMUNITY OUTREACH: LOCAL SCHOOLS UWC-USA has strong ties to local schools; new programs are strengthening those ties.
Climbing the Stairs at Montezuma
29 INSPIRATION Helena “Nelly” Saehrendt ’18, Switzerland Cover photo: Gwen Albers
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13 THE PROBLEM IS THE SOLUTION Ben Gillock, UWC-USA's environmental systems and societies teacher, finds new solutions to old problems.
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13 The magazine of UWC-USA, The Armand Hammer United World College of the American West Volume 53, Spring 2018 Vice President for Advancement: Christie Baskett Editor: Carl-Martin Nelson Peer Review Editor: Jose-Pablo Salas Rojas ’06 Copy Editor: Jeannine Santiago Designer: Firestik Studio Contributing Writers: Gwen Albers, Tyler Davis ’97, Ben Gillock, Tobi Kellner MUWCI ’00, Carl-Martin Nelson, Jose-Pablo Salas Rojas ’06, Franco Salinas ’18 Contributing Photographers: Gwen Albers, Chris Corrie, William Grassie, Sal Lavallo ’09, Carl-Martin Nelson, Tara Trudell Contact: UWC-USA P.O. Box 248 Montezuma, NM 87731 publications@uwc-usa.org
Kaleidoscope is published biannually by the UWC-USA Advancement Office to sustain connection with alumni and the school’s extended community.
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GREETINGS FROM MONTEZUMA
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LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
What does it take to go from talking about something to doing something? What does it take to try something new, something that stretches us in ways that helps us discover who we really are or who we might become? What does it take to make a positive difference in the lives of others, to be part of a movement that aspires to make the world a better place? These are the questions that have become more real to me as I continue my journey with UWC. There are no easy answers. Even harder is converting those answers into action. Effort matters. There is no doing, no trying, no making, no changing without effort. This issue of Kaleidoscope celebrates the effort it takes to do something. To try something. To make a positive difference. To be part of a movement that is only as effective as the commitment to action of its members. Whether it is the call to the demanding life of a teacher within the movement, or using our teaching position to solve local problems with global implications, or creating the expectation that we walk our environmental talk, we all know that tremendous effort is required. And then, of course, there is the (no small) effort it takes just to get up the stairs from lower campus to the Castle some days! I am grateful to all the members of our community and of the movement for the efforts they make on behalf of UWC-USA and a better world. In the end, it isn’t just what we accomplish. It is the spirit of focused effort that defines our own lives and inspires others. My best,
VICTORIA
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FEATURE
BY CARL-MARTIN NELSON
HEALING FOODS, LIVING HISTORY Nine first-years had the opportunity to learn from elders in Northern New Mexico during a Southwest Studies trip last fall.
Zhong ’19 (China) addressed the kinds of physical effort required of the students and how she developed a new appreciation for manual labor. “My peers gave me lots of encouragement during the experience,” Yinting said. “Also, our trip leaders Carmen and Jason did the exact
While students visited a number of farms and collectives run by
same work we did. Their spirits inspired me to try something that I
indigenous agriculturists, a primary focus was the Española Healing
had never considered before. I learned that I CAN DO farm work and
Foods Oasis, which is a food garden in the Northern Rio Grande
I ENJOY doing it! I realized that there is more to me than I think.”
Valley that serves as a means to preserve culture, language, and history. With a focus on food and medicinal plants, the Española
Intellectually, students were challenged by the stories and history
Healing Foods Oasis also serves as a way to manage the intermittent
shared by their hosts. A key teaching outcome, according to Carmen
rain and drought typical of New Mexico seasons.
Stone, UWC-USA’s community engagement coordinator, was a deeper understanding of the history of local indigenous people who live
Like many Southwest Studies experiences, the Española Healing
within miles of our safe community in Montezuma. “We learned about
Foods Oasis trip was designed to take students outside their comfort
intergenerational trauma and the long-term impact it can have on a
zones enough to facilitate more powerful learning. The trip challenged
community,” Carmen explained. “When students were engaged in the
students both physically and intellectually.
dialogue, they talked about their own cultural beliefs and applied their own cultural lenses. They also had an opportunity to look at indigenous
Students were challenged physically by the days of hard physical labor
people from their own countries in a different way.”
in the Española Healing Foods Oasis. The purpose of the oasis (garden)
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is to help native communities reclaim the plants strongly associated
Beata Tsosie-Pena, a community leader and farmer with the Tewa
with their heritage. However, gardening in New Mexico’s arid, rocky
Women United, has hosted school groups for many years and looks
soil is not easy. Students spent long days working on irrigation projects,
forward to the UWC-USA students each year. “They always strike me
planting native plants, and harvesting watermelons. First-year Yinting
as being real mature,” she explained. “They’re also very conscious of
community relationships and the importance of learning from
systems and societies class,” Anna Cohen ’19 (USA) explained,
other people. What I notice right away is that they listen more
“I learned that watersheds face enormous pollution challenges.
than they ask questions. You can tell that they’re active listeners
I immediately thought of how in the Foods Oasis we learned that
and they’re processing what they take in.”
certain plants have purification properties and can actually take
Like all well-designed learning experiences, the trip had an impact beyond the week students were traveling, learning, and working. The students shared their experiences with their peers and the larger community when they returned during an assembly. They also encountered the themes from their trip in the academic arena. “We learned a lot about
“Our trip leaders Carmen and Jason did the exact same work we did. Their spirits inspired me to try something that I had never considered before. I learned that I CAN DO farm work and I ENJOY doing it! I realized that there is more to me than I think.”
the indigenous people in the U.S. and listened to their stories,”
toxins out of water. It was interesting because it was a practical
Yinting explained. “We discussed their issues and concerns, and
solution to a huge problem that their communities have been
we visited their spirit lands. Later in the fall, our English literature
using for generations.”
teacher shared poems written by Native American poet Joy Harjo who writes about situations indigenous people face. After my
Students typically emerge from a Southwest Studies or Project
experience on the Foods Oasis project, I understand the themes
Week experience changed. The transformation can be minor
of Harjo’s poems more fully.”
adjustments to perspective or more significant realizations about one’s role in the world. “I think that this trip helped me understand
Other students recounted similar echoes as they re-immersed
what I am capable of in terms of physical labor and the joy I find
themselves in their intensive International Baccalaureate studies.
in doing it,” Anna concluded. “And it made me realize how lucky
“During a research project on watersheds for my environmental
I am in the way my own history has been recorded.”
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SPOTLIGHT
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BY GWEN ALBERS, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT
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UWC TEACHER NETWORK
PA T
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Since meeting in college, Hritik and Subarna Sampats’ lives have
out to be true,” she said. In addition, the couple had friends
followed nearly identical paths. Both earned undergraduate
teaching at UWC-USA—Doug Arnwine and Nandita Dinesh,
and graduate degrees in physics from the Indian Institute of
whom they met at UWC in Mahindra.
Technology in Kharagpur before working as software programmers for separate companies in Pune, India. While in Pune, they became
A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Doug learned about UWC while
familiar and intrigued with the nearby UWC Mahindra College.
studying for his master’s degree at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He made it his mission to land a teaching position,
In 2009, Hritik and Subarna were hired at Mahindra. During
and in 2011, he was hired to teach English and history at UWC
their five-year tenure, Hritik taught physics, math, and Theory
Mahindra. Nandita attended Mahindra from 2000 to 2002 and
of Knowledge, and Subarna taught math. The opening of UWC
lived in East Africa for a number of years after college before
Dilijan College in 2014 took the couple to Armenia for teaching
returning in 2011 to teach theatre and head the experiential
positions. Two years later, the Sampats went to UWC Changshu
education program. “We were really good friends that first
China, and in the fall of 2017, Subarna began teaching math at
semester,” Doug said. “She came back from winter break having
UWC-USA. Hritik will be teaching physics and possibly computer
broken up [with her boyfriend], and her mom came to visit in
science and math in the fall of 2018.
February.” Nandita’s mother met Doug and asked her daughter, ‘Why aren’t you dating that guy?’”
The Sampats are among eight UWC-USA teachers whose careers took them to more than one of the 17 UWC campuses around the world. Others include Nandita Dinesh MUWCI '02 and husband Doug Arnwine, Dr. Peter Samaranayake, Colin and Shirleen Lanham, and Eyad Shabaneh.
The couple married in December 2013 and took jobs at UWC Dilijan the following spring. Nandita taught theatre and Doug taught English, language, and literature. Not particularly happy there, the couple left Armenia after a year and debated between moving to India or the United States. “The only place I was interested in the United States was northern New Mexico,” Doug said. “Ever since leaving there in 2006, I constantly came back here. I love the landscape, and it feels like home.” In the fall of 2015, he began teaching Theory of Knowledge and language and literature at UWC-USA. Nandita took the year
Hritik discovered a very strong similarity at the four UWCs: the
to learn to drive and volunteer at a state-run youth detention
students. “They are selected through similar processes, and the
facility in Albuquerque. She planted the seeds for future UWC-
community is typically 200 to 250 16- to 18-year-olds,” he said.
USA students and staff to work with youth in the facility. In 2016,
Hritik found the UWC in China to be quite different: It’s a much
Nandita took over the theatre program at UWC-USA.
larger community, it has a pre-International Baccalaureate year, and it has a high percentage of Chinese students.
Dr. Peter Samaranayake, more commonly known as Dr. Sam, got his start at UWC Adriatic in 1987, where he taught physics, math, and
“The other three are remarkably similar in many ways, including
Theory of Knowledge for nine years. He also oversaw a dorm with
the isolation,” he said. “The campuses are so far removed.”
80 students. He referred to his time at Adriatic as the best teaching experience ever “because of the kids.” Sam began teaching physics
Subarna noted that while living in Armenia and China, the
at UWC-USA in the fall of 2017. With his wife studying abroad, Sam
couple faced language challenges. “In the United States, we
lives on the Montezuma campus with his sons Zoran (5) and twins
figured we would be more comfortable with the language, so
Yohan and Xandro (12), as well as nephews Ellison and Harrison
we felt we would feel more like being at home, which turned
Lwin, 20 and 18, respectively.
LEFT: Dr. Peter Samaranayake, who teaches physics at UWC-USA, lives on the Montezuma campus with (from left to right) sons Zoran (5) and twins Yohan and Xandro (12). TOP: Doug Arnwine and wife Nandita Dinesh (right) attending the 2014 graduation at UWC Mahindra College. Doug and Nandita met at Mahindra, married in 2013, and now both teach at UWC-USA. RIGHT: Subarna and Hritik Sampat, both upfront, traveled to the Himalayas with students during Project Week while teaching at UWC Mahindra College in 2013.
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BY FRANCO SALINAS ’18, PERU
Falling in
LOVE World With the
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Learning about the world’s
diversity and beauty during his two years at UWC-USA inspired Sal Lavallo ’09, USA, to travel the globe. Sal in November 2017 accomplished the feat, when he visited the last of the world’s 193 countries. Upon arriving in Malta, he was greeted with a lavish party, 193 balloons, a cake shaped like the world, and his parents. “[It] would not have been possible and maybe I wouldn’t have been interested in doing it if it were not for UWC-USA,” he said. Believed to be one of the youngest people to travel the globe, his accomplishment caught the attention of CNN, CNBC, the New York Post, USA Today, The Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom, and travel websites galore. To document his travels, Sal created a blog and posted details and photos on Facebook and Instagram.
ONE OF US Sal’s interest in traveling began with long
Trail of Seeds, which promotes cultural
Sal reminisced about a UWC-USA trip
family road trips all over the United States,
inclusive development. Sal also studied
to Mexico to study marine biology. “We
his father, Stephen Lavallo, said. Sal’s
abroad in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Abu Dhabi,
traveled for 10 hours, and it was fun to be in
international journey began in 2004, when
United Arab Emirates.
a bus for so long with my friends,” he said.
After college, he took a job with McKinsey
Norwegian classmate Eldar Undheim ’09
& Co. in Abu Dhabi as a management
noted that Sal has always been a positive
and strategy consultant. His work took
force in whatever he does. “We used to
His mother, Annette Lavallo, said her
him to Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, New
joke that it was impossible to unfriend
son’s interest in multiculturalism came
Zealand, and Kenya. When Sal left his job
him,” Eldar said.
from growing up surrounded by diversity.
in 2016, he had been to 115 countries and
“My husband’s family is Italian, and my
set out to visit the rest.
he and his father traveled to Japan and China. The trip simply gave him a new and powerful desire “to know another world.”
family is German, so he grew up in an environment with multiple languages and cultures,” she said.
Sal currently lives in Abu Dhabi and contends that the UWC experience made
His travels took him down many avenues.
him feel that the world was accessible
“I have crossed 115 countries by land
while showing him the human side of
in buses, [on the] back of a motorcycle,
people. As a result, he relies on two
Born in Indiana, Sal describes himself as a
canoes, walked, and rode a bicycle,” Sal
essential “lessons” from his time at UWC-
curious individual dedicated to exploring
said. “I was on the maglev train in China,
USA: First, the UWC mission provides a
the roles that gender, race, class, religion,
camels and horses, also helicopters,
helpful guide for what to do with your life.
and others play in people’s lives. After
planes, and jets. I have been able to visit
Second, he recalls—and tries to follow—
graduating from UWC-USA, he earned
UWC-USA friends and travel for work,
the advice of his English teacher Hannah
an undergraduate degree in economic
school, and personal trips with my own
Tyson: Fall in love as many times and as
development and identity from New York
money. My friends would buy $500 shoes,
deeply as possible.
University. While at NYU, he founded
but I would buy a $500 plane ticket.” Franco Salinas graduated from UWC-USA on May 19 . He is from Peru.
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FEATURE
COMMUNITY BY GWEN ALBERS, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT
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OUTREACH
LOCAL SCHOOLS
Fifth-grader Cameron Padilla’s math grades have soared thanks to
In the Las Vegas schools, UWC students, faculty, and staff provide
UWC-USA students like Yining Natalie Kung ‘19. A first-year from
Spanish tutoring, reading support, a course on philosophy for
Hong Kong, Natalie is among 100 UWC students helping students
children, and assistance with robotics, chess, and engineering.
in the two nearby Las Vegas, New Mexico, school districts with
They also run after-school programs in town and on the
academics and other activities.
Montezuma campus.
With Natalie’s help, Cameron has gone from dividing three-digit
Amy Conway, a third-grade teacher at Union Elementary,
numbers to eight-digit numbers. She also gives Cameron reason
appreciates the UWC students. “We really enjoy them, and I like
to look forward to Wednesdays, when the UWC students go to
that they work in groups with the students,” Conway said.
his school.
Union Elementary School fifth-grader Kayla Lopez created a fish
“I like that I’m getting better grades in math,” said the 11-year-old,
game on the computer as part of her robotics and programming
who attends Union Elementary School.
class, but she struggled to make it work. “I was stuck,” Kayla said.
As part of the curriculum at UWC-USA, students are required to participate in the experiential education program. Activities include, for example, volunteering at the campus library, kitchen,
Within 10 minutes, Manu Patil ’18, USA, helped Kayla solve her dilemma. “I just learned how to program the game I created,” she said with excitement.
recycling center, and farm; local animal shelter; the New Mexico
Sangwu Lee ’18, South Korea, also helps students in the robotics
Behavioral Health Institute; and much more.
and programming class and is gratified by the benefits for both
“ExEds are student activities focusing on sustainability, arts and culture, wilderness, or constructive and community engagement,” said Naomi Swinton ’89, the dean of experiential education. “They are required to be involved in a sustained way over 18 months on a weekly basis and take a leadership role in their second year.”
himself and the students. “I think what students benefit from is the fact that they find something outside the curriculum that they can enjoy,” he said. “When I teach something to kids, I need to understand the material very well, so it’s an opportunity for me to reorganize my understanding, as well.”
L) Kai Hall ’19, USA, tutors a Union Elementary School student in Las Vegas, New Mexico. R) Sangwu Lee ’18, South Korea, helps Union Elementary School students during a robotics and computer-programming class. Far R) Manu Patil ’18, USA, helps Union Elementary School student Kayla Lopez program a game she created. Manu is among 100 UWC-USA students helping students in both Las Vegas, New Mexico, school districts.
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BY BEN GILLOCK Ben Gillock is UWC-USA’s environmental systems and societies teacher, and he is the director of the UWC-USA Agroecology Research Center.
THE PROBLEM IS THE SOLUTION
Turning waste into resources at the UWC-USA Agroecology Research Center
Problem 1
FOOD
WASTE
The UWC-USA Dining Hall generates more than 3,000 pounds of food waste each month. Typically, this waste has gone to a landfill. There, it decomposes anaerobically, generating methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
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Traditional hand-turned compost pile systems have not been able to handle the volume and composition of our food waste. The large quantities of wet, nitrogenous, organic material turns anaerobic, becoming a disgusting smelly mess that attracts pests— including flies, skunks, raccoons, and bears.
FEATURE
Problem 2 RISK OF
WILDFIRE
Our beautiful campus, full of historic buildings and wonderful humans, is located among 300 acres of highly flammable forest. The clearing of the original ponderosa pine forests in the 1800s, along with fire suppression throughout the 20th century, led to dense secondary regrowth that is at high risk of a catastrophic wildfire. The UWC-USA forest has needed a proper management plan for decades. However, the cost and expertise needed to develop a management plan, conduct large-scale thinning operations, and dispose of all the wood waste has been daunting, so this problem has gone unaddressed.
the Solutions Last year, UWC-USA students working at the Agroecology Research Center (ARC) began investigating commercial composting systems that can handle larger loads of food waste. We visited two commercial composting operations in Santa Fe and learned about static aerated pile composting. In these systems, a blower forces air through the compost pile via a perforated PVC pipe. This method produces finished compost in 30 to 60 days without turning. However, it requires large quantities of bulky brown material like wood chips to allow the air to flow easily through the food waste. We had the food, but we did not have the wood chips. Around that time, we got a call from Dr. Josh Sloan, a professor in New Mexico Highlands University’s Forestry Department. They had a problem, too. They did not have a field site for their students to learn practical forestry skills. We offered our forest as a classroom, and they offered to have their classes develop a forest management plan that would allow us to bring our campus forests to safe fuel levels in the next five to 10 years. We still needed to find skilled labor to do the thinning—which can be very expensive. When we mentioned this to the professors at NMHU, they had an idea. Their forestry club had another problem! Every year, they struggle to raise money to go to the Society of American Foresters annual conference. The forestry club would be happy to thin our overgrown forests if they could sell some of the cut firewood to raise money for their trip. The rest of the cut wood will be either sold to offset ARC costs or donated as heating assistance to the elderly in Las Vegas. With the firewood distributed, the remaining slash wood will provide plenty of chips to be used in our new static aerated composting system. The resulting compost will be used at the ARC to grow thousands of pounds of fresh veggies for the UWC-USA Dining Hall. If we can see problems as opportunities to build more collaborative relationships, then having a lot of problems might not be such a bad thing after all.
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VIEWPOINT
BY TOBI KELLNER MUWCI’00, SUSTAINABILITY COORDINATOR, UWC RBC
It has become quite cliché for UWC graduates to talk about
After working at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales as
how their two years as a student were the most formative
a lecturer and consultant on renewable energy, I have returned to
in their lives. And yet, I also want to make this claim.
the UWC fold as sustainability coordinator at UWC Robert Bosch
I went to UWC Mahindra in India from 1998 to 2000.
College in Freiburg, Germany. On paper, the role of sustainability
For me, the most formative aspect wasn’t necessarily what happened on campus —the cultural diversity, the friends from many countries—but what I saw when I crawled through the hole in the fence behind the student houses.
in UWC has changed massively since my student days—after all, “a sustainable future” is now on a level with “peace” in our mission statement. In reality, education for peace and international understanding is built right into the very fabric and structures of UWC in ways that environmental sustainability is not (yet). Simply by bringing together young people from all around the world, we cannot fail to foster international understanding. Yet the very same act—thousands of young people flying thousands of miles— already pushes the carbon footprint of our students well beyond what is allowed per person to avoid the worst of climate change. UWC was a great solution to the challenges of the 20th century, but it is struggling to claim relevance, let alone leadership, on the emerging sustainability challenges of today. Moving away from a “diversity of passports” to an understanding
While I don’t want to encourage rule breaking among current
of diversity that can be achieved with fewer air miles, planting
students necessarily, these adventures were an important part
whole forests to offset our emissions, and doing everything to
of my Mahindra experience. The chance to get a close-up glimpse
make our campuses more sustainable are all necessary steps to
of life—both human and otherwise—in rural India was a great
reduce UWC’s gaping credibility gap on sustainability.
opportunity for me. Nature had always played a very important role
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in my life. I had spent much of my childhood just walking through
But if we want UWC to be as relevant to the great environmental
the woods of my native Bavaria in Germany. By placing me in rural
challenges of today as it was to the political challenges of its time
India, in a place with fabulous biodiversity, stark inequality but also
when it started half a century ago, then we will have to think more
dramatic economic growth, UWC prompted me to think more
fundamentally about what making education a force for building a
globally about the challenges we face as a species on a finite planet.
sustainable future should look like.
CHANGE AGENT The winner of the 2018 Giulio Regeni Alumni Impact Award is Leonoor “Noor” Cornelissen ’10. Originally from the Netherlands, Noor has lived, worked, and studied around the world. After graduating from UWC-USA, Noor pursued a bachelor’s degree in history and political science in Germany where her thesis focused on the future of Palestinian refugees. During this time, she held internships at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees as well as the Human Supporters Association in Nablus, Palestine. After completing her studies in Germany, she moved to Switzerland and began work on a master’s degree in international development with a focus on public health and gender. Her thesis examined how police forces handle genderbased violence claims in Nairobi, Kenya. In 2015, Noor began working for Médecins Sans Frontières at the U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs. Over the last three years, she
ALUMNI IMPACT BY CARL-MARTIN NELSON
has worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in South Sudan refugee camps on the border with Uganda, in detention centers in Libya, and on a search-and-rescue vessel on
the Mediterranean Sea. During her yearlong project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Noor set up the UWC Congolese National Committee. In its second year of operation, the committee received more than 80 applications for four fully funded scholarships. She will be speaking at graduation on campus on May 19 at 10:30 a.m. All alumni and community members are welcome to attend. A committee of students and alumni selected Noor as the winner from a crowded field of outstanding nominees. The other two finalists are also inspiring alumni who live the UWC mission in their daily lives and work: Rick Rowley ’94 is a filmmaker who tells the stories of fighters—fighters for truth, freedom, tolerance, and poverty. His films “are a tool for social change” and give people the courage to stand up for others. Dr. Len Necefer ’07 is a champion of the environment and an important voice for Native American communities. An energy manager with Allegheny Science & Technology, Len contributes significantly to the debate about public lands and national monuments, and he works directly with the Department of Energy’s Office of Indian Energy. Learn more about their work at www.uwc-usa.org/ ImpactAward. We congratulate Noor, Rick, and Len for their achievements.
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FEATURE
UWC-USA is an intense environment that transforms students over their two years living, working, and playing together.
MONTEZUMA MARRIAGES This article, however, explores the romantic transformations of three couples who met and later married after their time together in Montezuma, New Mexico.
BY GWEN ALBERS, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT
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Beatriz Diaz Acosta ’97 + Jon Vegard Larssen ’97 Jon Vegard Larssen from Norway had no doubt he would marry his UWC-USA sweetheart. And his commitment was all Beatriz Diaz Acosta from Mexico needed for the couple to survive a five-year long-distance relationship before marrying on August 17, 2002. Both 1997 graduates of UWC-USA, Jon and Beatriz are among 49 couples who graduated from the Montezuma campus and married, according to Jose Pablo Salas Rojas ’06, director of alumni engagement and giving at UWC-USA. Jon and Beatriz met in the fall of 1995 and began dating the following February. After graduating from UWC-USA, Beatriz went to the University of Pennsylvania and Jon went to Virginia Tech, where he earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering. Today, he works for Boeing in Seattle. After a semester at Penn, Beatriz moved to Mexico City, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey. “The internet saved us,” she said. Phone calls ran a cost-prohibitive $3 a minute, so the couple resorted to ICQ, an instant messaging system. “We would see each other plenty during the summer, and usually over the Christmas holiday, and at least once in the fall or spring,” Jon said. After they married, Jon continued his education at Virginia Tech and Beatriz earned a master’s degree in computer science, also at Virginia Tech. She recently left Amazon in Seattle to become an engineering manager with Facebook. Jon, 40, and Beatriz, 39, have a son, Max, 6.
Rosa Luz Bonilla ’89 + Jacobo Perez Herrera ’88 Rosa Luz Bonilla arrived in Montezuma from Mexico in the fall of 1987 afraid and unable to speak much English. Countrymate Jacobo Perez Herrera became her knight in shining armor. And although their parents forbade them from dating because they thought Rosa and Jacobo were too young, the couple continued seeing each other. This year, Rosa and Jacobo will celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary. Their relationship started during Rosa’s orientation at UWC-USA. “I was very scared of not knowing anyone,” she said. “He grabbed my hand, showed me around, and introduced me to faculty. He was very supportive, and we became inseparable.” After Jacobo graduated, he returned to Mexico for college. They wrote letters, and Jacobo took surprise, 36-hour bus trips to see Rosa for one day.
Yolisa Nalule Forster ’06 + Felix Forster ’05
Rosa also returned to Mexico after graduating from UWC-USA, but the couple broke up because their parents opposed the relationship. Rosa and Jacobo got back together, and against their families’ wishes, married on April 30, 1990. She was 18 and he was 21.
Felix Forster from Germany and Yolisa Nalule Forster from Uganda met the day Yolisa arrived on campus in the fall of 2004. They started dating a month later and remained committed when Felix graduated.
They completed their studies, and today, Rosa, 46, and Jacobo, 49, live in Sydney. She is a senior operations manager for Amazon Web Services, and he is a technology service manager for Dell EMC.
“We went from being together all the time to not being together at all,” he said. “I knew it was going to be hard, but truth be told, I knew for sure I wanted to give it a shot.”
They are the parents of Ana, 27, and Daniel, 25.
“Felix is the romantic,” Yolisa added. “He was very hopeful and very pragmatic. He was the believer that this could actually work.” After graduating from UWC-USA, Felix went to Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, where he earned undergraduate degrees in economics and math. He bought Yolisa a cellphone, even though students were not permitted to have phones on the UWC campus. “We would call nearly every day,” he said. After graduation, Yolisa studied molecular biology at Princeton— a one-hour drive from Lafayette. The couple would get together every other weekend. “I bought an old Ford Escort so we could see each other,” Felix said The couple got engaged in November 2011 and started applying to graduate schools in Europe only to learn a $20,000 education would cost $8,000 if one spouse was a European citizen. “The deadline for scholarships was in February (2012), so we had a court wedding in Washington, D.C., prior to that,” Felix said. Ceremonies in Uganda and Germany followed. Felix and Yolisa, both 31, live in the United Kingdom with their children, Lea Sanyu, 2, and Lukas Tenedo, 9 months. Felix is working on his doctorate in economics, and Yolisa is a program manager/epidemiologist. She is currently on maternity leave.19
BIG HEART
NONLINEAR thinking and giving
BY TYLER DAVIS ’97
With current operating costs at $13 million, we would need an endowment of $260 million to be fully self-sustaining. Our effective current endowment is $120 million, which means we will ideally increase our endowment by $140 million in 15 years. Other schools create a sustainable financial model by soliciting donations from alumni, increasing class size, increasing tuition, recruiting students who are likely to be donors in the future, and
I graduated from UWC-USA in 1997 inspired to be an agent for social justice but unsure how to realize my goal.
always been different. With roughly 100 alumni per year for 36 years, our school has more than 3,600 alumni—a group of vibrant and diverse people but not an enormous pool. At UWC-USA, we stress global understanding, public service, and social justice in our community and try to promote those values once we leave Montezuma. Our model works. We need to find a support model that works for our school simply because we do not have enough alumni to fund our endowment. With the size of the challenge, we need to find nonlinear rates of increase, so we need to think in novel ways. Fortunately, thinking in novel ways is what we
In the following years, I
do best. We have a significant number of students who accept the challenge to change the world,
volunteered internationally
combine it with innovative thinking, and create companies that create exponential wealth. We
for programs advocating
have alumni entrepreneurs changing the world in fields such as technology, gaming, sustainable
sustainable agriculture,
energy, and social ventures.
sustainable fisheries, and living wages. The grass-roots approach to change was rewarding, but the scale of impact was small. In
My proposal is simple: I would like to create a norm for alumni from UWC-USA to include the school when starting new ventures.
2005, I returned to the U.S. to
As an entrepreneur myself, I know that donating stock is the easiest when creating a new
pursue a Ph.D. in public policy.
company because shares have the least value. Working with the leadership, I would like to create
A principle goal for UWC-USA is to grow our endowment to a self-sustaining level by our 50th anniversary in 2032.
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developing curriculum on business and profitability. Their model works. But UWC-USA has
a culture of alumni gifting 1% of stock to UWC-USA when founding a company. While many of our ventures will fail, some will succeed. And some will succeed beyond our wildest imaginings and can be the key to the economic sustainability of a school that has given us so much. Tyler Davis, Ph.D. | UWC-USA Class of 1997
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PEER REVIEW CLASS OF 1985 Andrés Reséndez was the guest on National Public Radio’s Hidden Brain podcast. Titled “An American History,” this podcast also briefly touched on some New Mexico history. Andrés is a history professor at the University of California, Davis.
CLASS OF 1986 1 Melanie Weston hosted a dinner in New York City in support of the UWC Refugee Initiative. Bjorn Bjerke ’85, Irfan Hasan ’85, Jacqueline Vargas Arellanes, and John Morris ’85 attended.
CLASS OF 1987 2 Amit Mital co-founded Blue Canoe Learning, a startup based on Karen Taylor’s Color It Out! initiative. This startup is among the first to be accepted to the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Amit and Dejan Nenov recently met and went skiing in Utah.
3 Ana Beatriz Campos Mora has been tutoring students in an art and literature educational program in Costa Rica.
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5 Arild Drivdal and Jakkai Siributr ’88 met in Mozambique. 6 Carla Castellanos and family celebrated New Year’s in Texas. Doug Turner and Taru Virtanen met for drinks in Brussels.
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7 More happy encounters to kick off the year UWC style, Sebastien Ramseyer and Taru Virtanen met in Paris. 8 Manolo Espinosa got together with Christian Janssen ’88 in London. 9
9 Luc Espinosa, Manolo Espinosa’s son, a first-year at UWC Maastricht, visited Klaus Desmet’s ’88 parents. The elder Desmets have hosted three generations of UWCers. 4 Mariano Martinez is now living in Mexico.
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4 Maite Basulto lives in Chile and enjoyed the holidays with family. 1 Marisa Leon celebrated the holidays at home in Texas. Marisa is the Head of School at The Magellan International School in Austin Texas.
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2 Priscilla Maloney De Castro and Marisa Leon reunited in Panama after many years. 3 Taki Rapulane-lyle lives in Connecticut. 5 Vera Siregar hosts UWC South East Asia students at home often.
CLASS OF 1988 5
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Harry “Harj” Harjono visited the Montezuma campus for the first time since graduating. He was joined by his wife, Velinda Harjono, and son, Hayden, 10. Harj, who is from Indonesia and lives in Union, New Jersey, is a vice president with Bank of America. Velinda is a homemaker. The couple met while attending graduate school at Columbia University. Harj and Velinda also are the parents of Hanson (20), a sophomore at Purdue University, and Hanna (18), who attends the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. 7 Klaus Desmet visited his youngest daughter Cynthia Desmet ’19 on campus with recent alumna and daughter Nathalie Desmet ’16.
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CLASS OF 1989 6 Irene Yee met fellow alumni Caroline Sim ’85, Chor Lee ’88, Divvya Dasan ’05, Eng Han Ng ’06, Mieneke Van Dixhoorn ’87, Vera Siregar ’87, Wayne Menezes ’87 and our
president at an alumni dinner in Singapore in late March.
CLASS OF 1993 8 Tamas Orban visited campus in February. “It felt great to return to New Mexico and visit Montezuma!”
CLASS OF 1994 Will Mendoza now lives in North Carolina.
CLASS OF 1995 Edward Weatherly is inspired by fellow UWC alumni, friends, and other peers and change agents of peace. Edward recently launched his new website, focused on his own personal retrospective pop-graffiti artwork, which is fueled by “personal eXperiences and eXample.”
CLASS OF 1996 9 Charles Bibilos and his wife Amber had their first baby girl, Milena Kenzie Bibilos.
CLASS OF 1997 Idan Benhorin now lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, and completed his medical degree a few years ago. Idan is an attending physician at the lung and thoracic malignancies unit at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.
CLASS OF 1998 Alexa Munoz-Smith and Ben Melkman are super happy living in New York City with their three children. Ben is working with Luigi Gentile every day. “So you can imagine the trouble they are causing,” Alexa says. She is just finishing the production of a movie she has been working on since last year.
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Angari Kebuchi Muikia specializes in providing advisory services in fiscal decentralization policy and implementation for governments in Africa. Angela Lytton Ganata says, “On the winter solstice, my husband Victor and I welcomed our daughter Mira Caterina Lytton Ganata into the world. I am on maternity leave until May. I am still in Los Angeles working for America’s favorite quiz show.’ Ariel Hearne Maddocks has a busy family life near Boston where they keep active with school, jobs, pets, and adventures to museums and nature in the area. She works for Liberty Mutual, and her husband Chris works for March of Dimes. Their children are in first and third grade and are very excited to visit UWC-USA this summer! Lena Boesser-Koschmann is happy to report that she will soon be married, so look for her new name at the reunion! Margaret Lau began working again after a year of maternity leave. Rylan (1) and Kian (3) keep her busy with a fun family life! Pierre Monteux is still managing real estate on the French Riviera. In his spare time, he enjoys riding all over the Alps. He is traveling Easter weekend to Australia to meet Dan Wilkins ’97. Together, they will take a road trip through Australia and Tasmania on their bikes. Along the trip, they will meet with Michelle Aitken Kent and Bart Klem ’97, both living there.
Shannon Duncan Bodwell is still working for Grassroots International, a nonprofit that supports social movements of smallholder farmers, women, and indigenous people around the world as they organize to gain their human rights to land, water, and food. Her daughter just turned one and all is well. Her entire family will be at the reunion this summer. Steve Watkins is finishing his first year of law school at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. This summer, he will be interning at the Department of Justice’s Office of Tribal Justice where he will work on federal issues of importance to Native American communities. He will be visiting London in March meeting with UWCers there.
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Siu Fung Emerald Yau lives in Hong Kong and works in finance. She is married and has two adorable kids. The family has recently traveled to Niseko, Japan, for a skiing adventure!
CLASS OF 2000 Inna Poliakova lives in London. In March, she met fellow alumni Emma Smith ’12, Grace Humphries ’08, Jose Pablo Salas Rojas ’06, Leonardo Costa ’04, Morgan Furneaux ’14, Muchanga Zebron ’08, Muriel Rambeloarison ’07, Nora Venin ’17, Subitha Subramaniam ’88, and Zohar Fiszman ’17.
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CLASS OF 2001
CLASS OF 2005
1 Ida Hagtun lives in Seattle and met UWC-USA President Dr. Victoria Mora and fellow alumni Beatriz Diaz Acosta ’97, Brendan O’Connor ’04, Emma Manda Mwanza ’86, Jon Vegard Larssen ’97, and Tyler Davis ’97 for dinner last January.
2 Damian Almiron Bonnin is currently finishing his M.D.-Ph.D. training in the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College (devising strategies to prevent brain tumors from becoming resistant to anti-tumor drug treatment.) He has been invited to speak at the American Association for Cancer Research Conference and the New England Neuro-Oncology Symposium at Harvard.
CLASS OF 2003
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3 Sarunas Cerniauskas received an official state award from Lithuania’s president. This award was given to him for promoting investigative journalism and fighting corruption in Lithuania.
Felix Forster completed his master’s degree. Felix and Yolisa Nalule Forster ’06 recently welcomed their second baby.
5 Virginia Senkomago and Tshewang Dorji ’02 visited their Get-Away mother Joyce Litherland last November. Virginia lives in Atlanta and Tshewang lives in Washington, D.C.
8 Maria Joao Carvalho married Joao Carlos Martins Teixeira.
CLASS OF 2004
7 Yukio Iseki stopped by campus during European National Day in the fall. Yukio is now working in New York City.
6 Brendan O’Connor married Lindsey O’Connor in the fall. “April Grotberg ’03, Hadar Meltzer, Jennifer Lovitt Riggs ’90, and my sister Shannon O’Connor ’05 represented UWC-USA at the wedding,” Brendan says. Nao Munemura moved to Chile with her husband and their baby! They will be there for three to four years.
4 Yiftach Dayan and Ayelet Dayan welcomed their first baby.
CLASS OF 2006 Andres Guzman Garza and his wife moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, to begin work as the Latin American program manager at Verité, a global non-governmental organization working to provide the knowledge and tools to eliminate the most serious labor and human rights abuses in global supply chains. Cassie Chambers now serves as the vice-chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party!
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Emily Cohane-Mann married Dan Weber. Hilary Borcherding attended the wedding. After working for Mexico’s Supreme Court for a few years, Nalleli Nava Miranda is now studying at University of Edinburgh where she is pursuing her master’s degree in criminal law and criminal justice. 9 Sayed Sarchashmah married Naoko Okuma.
CLASS OF 2007 Hanna Bobyk is an MBA candidate at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. At a recent business school event in Rome, Hanna met Anderson Cooper. Josh Madere lives in Austin, Texas, and recently married J.R. Ayala. Pablo Sanchez Santaeufemia has been recognized by Ashoka as a 2017 Ashoka Fellow. This year, the Ashoka Spain committee reviewed more than 700 applications of social entrepreneurs. Those who are chosen as fellows must have an innovative idea that has the potential to trigger a nationwide impact. Shanthakumar Bannirchelvam is the managing director at Global Strategy Partners. Shanthakumar recently got engaged. He has been doing some cool projects lately, including working with Semacare, Narayana Health, and the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute. Sonam Pelden is the cofounder and managing director of Minenergy. Minenergy
is on a mission to be at the forefront of the blockchain revolution and to build an infrastructure that is powered 100 percent by renewable and waste-based energy.
CLASS OF 2008 Ziahraa Khaleel (Zizo) recently moved to Yemen for a year where she will be working with the Red Cross.
CLASS OF 2009 Fatymatou Dia jumped the broom with Ihsan Ibrahim Saleem. The couple’s home base is in Atlanta. In May, Fatymatou will be finishing her year on our UWC-USA campus as the first Alumniin-Residence Fellow.
Sal Lavallo has visited every country in the world, including 93 United Nation member states. Sal has also been selected as one of the young leaders for the Global Baku Forum in Azerbaijan.
CLASS OF 2010 Andrea Cruz Quiroz and her partner have been traveling for more than 10 months and doing a reverse “Che Guevara” trip, including North and South America and then heading to Asia. “This journey is a lifelong dream for the both of us,” Andrea says, “and we couldn’t be happier to have sold our belongings, quit our jobs, and become nomads with nothing but the packs on our backs. We always enjoy running into UWCers, and we welcome people to join us on the road for a bit. Ingunn Fystro was our most recent visitor and spent 10 days with us in Ecuador.”
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PEER REVIEW
2 Jackson Oldham lives in Oswego, Kansas. Jackson was a keynote speaker at the Martin Luther King celebrations of 2018 in Oswego. He’s a 2014 graduate of the University of Oklahoma with degrees in criminology and international security. In 2016, he was awarded a Medal of Honor from Portland Fire and Rescue for saving the life of a civilian while on duty.
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Tanya Tawengwa released her newest single titled With You.
CLASS OF 2011 1 Julia Lau had her first baby. 3 Moustapha Amadou Tidjani Abdou recently moved to New Mexico with his wife Monica.
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5 Nofar Hamrany was drafted to the Israel Defense Forces only two months after leaving Montezuma. Nofar was able to get in the foreign relations department and work on peacekeeping on the border of Israel and Egypt. After two years there, she attended New York University Shanghai. Nofar is now in Beijing for a year to study global environmental politics as a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University.
CLASS OF 2012 7
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Adilson Gonzalez lives in New York and works as a legal assistant for Her Justice.
CLASS OF 2013 During his time at Bates College, Gideon Ikpekaog received a purposeful work grant to work in Nigeria with a non-government organization doing public health and socioeconomic relief work during the summer of 2016. “As a UWC-USA and a Bates grad, I am very happy to tell you that I have found purposeful work (a true spiritual calling) in Nigeria as the founder and director of Servants in Action,” Gideon says. Niccolò Bigagli now lives in New York City and is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. physics program at Columbia University.
CLASS OF 2014 Ahmad Farid Noori has announced his decision to go to the next Summer Olympics. If Ahmad qualifies, he will become the first Afghan to race the Olympics in a mountain-biking event. 4 Emily Venturi visited campus and her Get-Away family in Santa Fe and met current countrymates and students Benedetta Morari ’18, Luca del Negro ’18, and Laura-Lys Alvarez ’19. Emily is finishing her political science studies at the University of North Carolina.
CLASS OF 2015 6 Alva Wijaya has released 50 exemplars of her photo book titled Halfway Asleep, which is a compilation of recent portraits of environmental pieces.
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CLASS OF 2016 Thanksgiving in Boston has been a tradition for many years. Last November, Abhiti Vaish, Alejandro Flores, Anneli Xie, Beatrix Howe, Christine Pourheydarian, Francesca Brecha, Giaime Mameli, Jerome Saliba, Joicy Xu, Lucas Vazquez, Milan Park, Mustafa Al-Ajmi, Qizhen Yang, Nicolas Lopez, Nam Do, and Norma Ruiz Cruz met in Boston. Mohannad Arbaji ’07 hosted the group at LearnLaunch where they chatted about incorporating the UWC experience in everyday routines. They also met with other UWC alumni who hosted a discussion on mental health. The school joined via video and chatted with the group about exciting things happening on campus Charlie Thompson is studying computer science and government at Cornell University, and he is particularly interested in the intersection of blockchain technology and voting systems. After graduating, Charlie took a gap year and worked in the Alberta oil fields in Canada. As a result, he is now a freshman who could hypothetically buy his own beer. He is interested in natural language processing and enjoys taking pictures. 8 Chavonne Bowen is studying physics and engineering at Notre Dame of Maryland University and is a member of The New York Academy of Sciences.
Gabriel Levie is completing his second year at Oxford University. Gabe will be completing an internship at Google, in Dublin, this summer. 7 Lubna Sherieff received the Camden’s Young Citizen of the Year Award for 2018, which was presented as part of the Australia Day Civic Awards. Maite Vignau spent a month volunteering for Lighthouse Relief, an organization that aims to provide a dignified, humanitarian response to the refugee crisis in Europe. Maite’s work was in Skala Sikamineas, Greece, and it included day and night spotting shifts while providing emergency response at refugee boat landings. With the help and cooperation of a dedicated team, they managed to provide shelter, food, water, dry clothing, and medical support to all arrivals crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey. Raisa Muhtar met Ludovic de Bruyn ’17, Luis D’Introno ’17, Luisa Da Silva Macias, Maymouna Kane, Nathalie Desmet, and Simon Alvarez ’18 in Madrid over the winter break. Rekhia Adams is pursuing a major in theatre with a certificate in musical theatre and is hoping to pursue a minor in international studies with a focus on social justice, human rights, and activism. Rekhia is also part of the American Music Theatre Project. Rekhia met Daniel Firebanks, Kamish Valiani ’17, Laia Domingo Cots, Lauren Lee Place ’15, and Sam Arrants for a small alumni dinner at Northwestern University last fall.
CLASS OF 2017 “December 31, 2017, the last boat of the year arrived to the shore of Lesvos, Greece just before midnight,” writes Antonio Andrade. “83 people arriving from a long and exhausting journey and 10 Emergency Response Centre International volunteers embraced each other as we welcomed the new year. It was the first time that I felt truly identified while outside of UWC by those few words: ‘unite people, nations, and cultures for peace.’” Ludovic de Bruyn is a student at Rotterdam School of Management, and Luis D’Introno is studying mechanical engineering at the University of Manchester. Together, they have developed Skybox, a mobile app that implements virtual reality and augmented reality technologies designed specifically for museums and exhibits. Their app will be available at the Manchester Museum in May 2018.
Nora Venin is studying at the University of Central London and has been accepted to do an internship with the United Nations in New York. She’ll be there for two months this summer.
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LOOKING BACK
BY THE NUMBERS 28
(restored areas)
Stairs in lower-campus dorms and up to the Castle
Stairs in the Old Stone Hotel
Stairs in the Zeinal-Zade Science Center
261
499
100
77
Stairs within the Castle
CLIMBING
STAIRS at Montezuma RAVEENA FLOR LALWANI ’19, PARAGUAY
AVI ROMO ’18, USA
Living in the Castle, I actually go up
without going to the gym. I think it is
and down these stairs at least five
more convenient to live on the upper
times a day. I know a lot of students
campus to go to breakfast without a
from lower campus who don’t go to
climbing session in the morning, but
breakfast because of these exhausting
sometimes the stairs bring happiness
stairs. They also don’t like to visit
and entertainment.
students who live in the Castle. That is very sad.
CRISTIAN MENDOZA ’19, USA I live in Denali on the lower campus. I have to wake up early every morning to go up the stairs. I think there needs to be a more efficient way for us to go to the Castle, where most of
TOTAL STAIRS ON CAMPUS
1,019
The stairs are a good way to exercise
CHIAZO AGINA ’18, USA I describe the stairs as laborious.
MARGUERITE DE BIE ’18, THE NETHERLANDS I describe the stairs as connective.
the student life happens. The good
DANCE TEACHER JUDI HARRISON RUPRECHT
thing about the stairs is that I get an
The stairs are exhausting. There are
opportunity to exercise and stay fit.
107 from my apartment on lower
ABDI FATAH ’18, SOMALIA I don’t like them. They are very
campus to the Castle. If you go up them two at a time, there are half as many.
tiring, and they take my energy away. Sometimes I miss breakfast, and that makes me sad.
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The backdrop for the African National Day cultural show was painted almost exclusively by Helena “Nelly” Saehrendt ’18, Switzerland. Nelly created a backdrop that augmented the power of the dances, skits, monologues, and songs.
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INSPIRATION
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NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE
PAID The MAGAZINE of UWC-USA, The ARMAND HAMMER UNITED WORLD COLLEGE of the AMERICAN WEST
ALBUQUERQUE, NM PERMIT #1888
P.O. Box 248 Montezuma, NM 87731-0248 USA
www.UWC-USA.org
POSSIBILITIES
UWC MAKES EDUCATION A FORCE TO UNITE PEOPLE, NATIONS, AND CULTURES FOR PEACE AND A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE.
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As we approach our 40th anniversary, many of our alumni and friends are looking for ways to engage with the students here in Montezuma or help UWC-USA move forward. The alumni section of the website has a page (www.uwc-usa.org/engage) dedicated to cataloguing the many ways to share time and talent. From the new Alumni-in-Residence Fellowship program to being another adult on a Southwest Studies Trip, we have many ways for you to share your life experiences with our students. It is possible to come back! Jose-Pablo Salas-Rojas '06, Raechel Waters ’90, Fatymatou Dia ’09, Moustapha Amadou ’11, and Bonnie Bennet ’85 helped lead the inaugural Post-UWC Second-Year Retreat this spring.