Goodbye graduates, and good luck!

CLAS graduates are leaving the College for new careers, graduate school, or medical school. Featured here are profiles of some members of the Class of '08. Check back for new profiles as graduation approaches.

Leah Brown-Wilusz

Winning a prize at a national professional conference is a gratifying feat, especially for Leah Brown-Wilusz , CLAS '08, an undergraduate who competed against graduate students at a national biology meeting.

As a senior, Brown-Wilusz presented her research poster at the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology Conference in San Antonio , Texas . Although nearly all of her fellow presenters were graduate students, Brown-Wilusz left Texas with the prize for best student poster in the field of vertebrate morphology.

Its title: "Ontogenetic effects of hatching plasticity in spotted salamanders due to larval and egg predators."

"It was a really great experience to present my research and get feedback on it. It was a four-day conference and a really great environment to be in because there are so many exchanges of ideas," says Brown-Wilusz.

"It was awesome to have my project and presentation thought of so highly; and to beat out graduate students was really cool. I was pretty shocked when I won. The prize was given on best poster and presentation, and I loved my research, so it was really easy to talk about."

Brown-Wilusz came to UConn from Torrrington High School and majored in ecology and evolutionary biology degree as an honors student in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She worked in Prof. Kurt Shwenk's laboratory under a graduate student mentor, Tobias Landberg, studying the body morphology of amphibians, specifically, salamanders.

"Working in the lab really helped me get a whole new perspective on science and research. It really gives me a lot more confidence in talking about my abilities in science," Brown-Wilusz says.

After graduation, she plans to teach after pursuing a one-year education degree.

"I want to inspire and make kids love science as much as I do," she says. "I want kids to think it's cool to draw out the cell cycle and go down to the river and pull up a bunch of muck." - Curran Kennedy, CLAS '08

Colleen Deasy

The debate on how to improve education for our nation's poor has been going on for decades, but Colleen Deasy , CLAS '08, is forging ahead with a new campaign, determined to produce results.

Deasy, a human development and family studies and English double major, brought Jumpstart, a national organization dedicated to enhancing the educational foundation for preschoolers, to the University of Connecticut .

She organized 45 other student volunteers to work with pre-school youngsters from low income families in Connecticut, helping to prepare the children for elementary school.

"Preschoolers are at a really interesting age and there's a lot of potential to do something beneficial. Studies have shown the importance of early intervention so we work on language, literacy, problem solving, and social skills," Deasy says.

"We work with children whose families are living below the poverty line because studies have shown that these children typically start school behind their more affluent peers in all of those areas."

Deasy, who is from North Falmouth , Massachusetts , and came to UConn from Falmouth High School , will continue her education at Boston College Law School where she plans to get a JD and a joint master's degree in education.

Deasy gives the most credit for her dedication to service to UConn's Community Outreach organization.

"Service is very important to me and I owe a lot of my personal and professional growth to Community Outreach. It inspired me to bring Jumpstart to campus and through it I've learned a lot of valuable skills that have taught me the value of service." - Curran Kennedy, CLAS '08

Jeffrey “Steve” Ferketic

Jeffrey “Steve” Ferketic, CLAS ’08, has taken full advantage of the opportunities UConn offers.  As a sophomore, he studied abroad and interned in Cape Town, South Africa, where he explored the concept of “conservation justice,” investigating the impact on residents of a conservation project proposed for the Macassar Dunes.

As a junior, he traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, furthering his research into conservation justice, and revisiting South Africa to present his research paper at a conference of the Society for Conservation Biologists.

A graduate of Conard High School in West Hartford, Steve also was active on the Environmental Policy  Advisory Council at UConn, a member of the a capella singing group, “A Different Note,” and a mentor and tutor to children in a housing project in Willimantic. He was also the student representative on the search committee to select the new dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

At UConn, he says, “people really line up the resources for you to do a lot.”

After graduation, Steve will head to Brownsville, Texas, where he will teach high school science in the Teach for America program. He will be one of 50 Amgen Fellows who are selected to teach math and science.

Phillis Kwentoh

Many UConn undergraduates look toward the future and wonder how they'll make their mark in the world. Phillis Kwentoh, CLAS '08, is making hers as we speak. 

Kwentoh, a journalism major with a double minor in human rights and African American studies, has always had an interest in photography. 

In October 2007 Kwentoh was featured in a juried art exhibit in Brooklyn, New York. Kareem Black, a celebrity photographer, was the exhibit curator. It was the perfect opportunity for Kwentoh to showcase her work. 

Kwentoh discovered her confidence as a photographer while on vacation with her family to her parents' native Nigeria, using her camera to capture a part of Nigeria 's unique culture.

One of Kwentoh's photos from that trip, Nwa Ifele, which in her family's native Igbo language means "shy child," was chosen by Black for the exhibit. 

Kwentoh, who has not taken an art class since attending Connecticut 's North Haven High School, understands the importance of photography. 

"The ability to tell a story without saying a single word is what attracted me to photography." 

After graduating in May, she plans to work as a photojournalist.

"I want to be a human rights advocate and use my photography to show people what's really going on in the world.  I want to capture powerful moments.  I want people to look at my photos and say, 'I understand what you're saying.'"  - Curran Kennedy, CLAS '08

Nikita Lakdawala

At just 21 years of age, Nikita Lakdawala , CLAS '08, from Watertown, Conn., has combined a world of experience with her double major in molecular and cell biology and an individualized major that she created, health care and social inequality.

A graduate of Watertown High School, at UConn she has studied abroad in London, volunteered to serve the homeless and hungry in Boston, New York, and Willimantic, Conn., and worked with the underprivileged in soup kitchens and farm fields.

"Even though it's such a large school, I've been able to get involved in community service programs. I think students, if they want to be involved, can find things to do," she said.

"It's not the same thing to read about something in a textbook as it is to see it firsthand."

To this end, Lakdawala organized her senior thesis around her volunteer work in Willimantic where she observed acute care at a clinic and gave health care talks a soup kitchen.

"Barriers to health care access and discrepancies between the poor and rich are big issues that need to be tackled," she says.

Ambition to reform U.S. health care led Lakdawala to London for a semester, where she visited hospitals and interviewed doctors.

"I think medicine now involves both medical and social aspects and it's more important now than ever to understand how these parties work together."

Next fall, she will begin studying for her own medical degree at UConn Medical School in Farmington . - Curran Kennedy, CLAS '08

Ryan Notti

Ryan Notti , CLAS '08, is headed for what he hopes will be a career as a physician-scientist at a large academic hospital, where he would have both clinical and research responsibilities.

He will work toward a combined MD/PhD from the Tri-institutional Medical Scientist Training Program, which offers an MD from Weill-Cornell Medical College and a PhD from Cornell, the Rockefeller University , or Sloan-Kettering Institute.

Notti, who is from Cheshire , Conn. , and graduated from Cheshire High School , came to UConn as a Nutmeg Scholar, a highly competitive UConn award. Two years ago he became UConn's first Goldwater Scholar, winning a merit scholarship that many consider to be the most prestigious award for undergraduates in the sciences.

A biology major, he was active in undergraduate research beginning in his freshman year, when he worked in the laboratory of physiology and neurobiology associate professor Joanne Conover, studying the effects of aging on stem cell populations in the mouse brain.

He was active in the Community Outreach program, serving as the student director for an after-school tutoring program.

At UConn's 2008 Scholars' Day, where Notti was the student speaker, he urged students to extend their commitment to community service beyond the volunteer projects they undertook as undergraduates.

"I believe that Scholars' Day recognizes more than our current achievements, it represents our collective potential: our potential to extend our knowledge beyond the classroom, and our potential to employ that gift in a manner that betters not only ourselves, but our communities and our world," he said.

Monoswita Saha

Monoswita Saha, CLAS '08, a Bengali native who came to the U.S. when she was four years old, has returned to India two times for research projects she undertook as an undergraduate in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

A double major in economics and English, with a minor in India Studies, she has studied the impact of globalization on India as well as sustainable living and ecotourism and their potential benefits for rural areas.

She spent a significant amount of time in Indian villages, using her knowledge of the language to learn such things as the importance of organic practices for sustainable development and how rural areas can better connect with urban areas.

"Without wealth, you can't have development, but progress is defined by the degree of freedom, choice and mobility it gives people, not necessarily wealth," she says, citing the need for improved educational facilities in rural areas.

A graduate of Trumbull High School, Saha is also a short story author who has published her work in the campus magazines Long River Review and Catamaran .

After graduation, she may join Teach for America or a similar teaching program that benefits underprivileged populations.

Logan Senack

When Logan Senack, CLAS '08, first considered a Study Abroad experience of sailing across the Atlantic on the recreated 19th -century sailing ship, Amistad , he was terrified.

"And so was my mother," says the Torrington native.

That was last June, when Logan was one of two CLAS students to join the first leg of the Amistad 's yearlong voyage from New Haven to England , Sierra Leone , the Caribbean, and back, following the triangular sea-route of the slave trade.

His unusual Study Abroad experience as a sailor was just the first of his forays. This summer, after graduation, he will spend five weeks in South Africa, studying plant ecology and evolution with other UConn biologists as part of a National Science Foundation international Research Experience program.

A University Scholar, Logan’s senior thesis was on the reproductive biology of a native perennial, Desmodium cupidatum. He conducted a germination experience in the summer of 2006, and a pollination experiment last fall on the legume.

Since his freshman year, Logan has done research. He was selected for a summer research program conducting wetlands inventories for UConn’s Office of Environmental Policy, and he has worked with plants both invasive and endangered.  He was a co-founder of the Environmental Science Club and was president for two years, and, according to faculty who have worked with him, Logan has been a strong communicator of environmental values.

Philip Shaw

Philip Shaw, who will receive his PhD degree in economics in May, had what one faculty member called "an unusually strong outcome" to his job search for an academic position.

Shaw had 18 interviews, 11 offers of trips to campuses, and six offers of tenure-track faculty positions at colleges ranging from Kenyon College, a small, private liberal arts college in Ohio where a third of the freshman class are National Merit scholars, to Kansas State University, a public university with more than 23,000 students.

In the fall, he will begin teaching economics at Fairfield University, the offer he accepted in order to be close to friends in the Northeast.

Shaw said his thesis topic, on educational corruption, was particularly interesting to potential employers.

He began working on it as an undergraduate economics major in the CLAS ('04), where he won a Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) award to study educational corruption in the Ukraine .

Christian Zimmermann, associate professor of economics, who was Shaw's undergraduate and graduate adviser, says that Shaw gathering his own data firsthand was rather unusual.

"He got a research grant, and he just did it. That's how he is," he says.

Shaw says he chose an academic career because "I really enjoyed teaching - it's something I need in my life."

Three PhD students graduating from economics this spring have academic jobs waiting for them. Besides Shaw, Nicholas Shunda received an offer at the University of Redlands in California, and Rasha Ahmed received an offer from Trinity College in Hartford .

The economics PhD market is well organized, says Zimmermann, with centralized advertising through the American Economics Association and a national meeting where students and employers schedule interviews.

And, he adds, "Everybody is interested in the best students."

As a graduate alumnus of economics told students at a recent Economics Department forum, "You have to have a heart to heart with yourself and decide where you want to teach, how you want to spend your time."

Stephen P. Neun, who received his PhD from UConn in 1988 and now is a professor of economics and dean of social science and management at Utica College, advised the students, "It's a question of placing yourself in a position to succeed."

Eric Smolitsky

Eric Smolitsky, CLAS ’08, a double biological sciences and psychology major, added three additional biology minors to his work load as an undergraduate: in molecular and cell biology, physiology and neurobiology, and neuroscience.

“Super-biology, I like to call it,” says the honors student, who has been accepted at UConn Medical School.

Smolitsky, a graduate of Stamford High School, emigrated to Connecticut from Russia when he was three years old, learning English by watching Police Academy shows on television.

“I’m very much a Connecticut person,” he says.

At UConn he did undergraduate research on embryonic stem cells, working in the laboratory of physiology and neurobiology professor Joseph LoTurco, who last year received a grant from the State Stem Cell Research Fund to study the genes that control the migration of stem-cell derived neurons in the brain.

Eric’s project has been on the self assembly of human embryonic stem cells, culturing them and studying their development into neural pre-cursor cells.

The eventual goal of the research is to develop embryonic stem cells as neural cells that might be used to repair stroke damage.

Smolitsky piled on the biology courses at UConn because of his love of research and desire to learn more about neuroscience. He also volunteered on health-related projects, is president of the Golden Key Honor Society, and participated in the Brazilian jujitsu martial arts club.

Board and video games, another pastime, drew his attention as president of the Games Guild Club.

This spring Smolitsky won one of the Lt. Paul L. Drotch, USMC, Class of 1957, Memorial Scholarships established by UConn Trustee Peter Drotch in memory of his brother.

David Steuber

As the president of the College Democrats and a triple major in political science, economics, and philosophy, David Steuber, CLAS '08, spent much of his time at UConn trying to influence community change.

Even as a child, Steuber was interested in politics. "When I was a little kid I would watch the news and wouldn't get bored with it," he said.

At a young age, Steuber became inspired to get involved in politics when an 18-year-old ran for the mayor of his hometown Loveland, Ohio .

Steuber joined the College Democrats in 2004. He was also the president of the UConn International Relations Association, and he was a University Scholar.

As if being a triple major and the president of two clubs weren't enough, Steuber was also a member of the Leviathan Society, a political debate group, and he was part of a UConn Relief Corps trip to revive New Orleans .

After graduation, he will work on Congressman Joe Courtney’s reelection campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut’s Second District. After that, he will consider graduate or law school, or service work, he says.

"I figure the more I do, the more options I'll keep open for later on," he says.

Alicia Vose

“I came to UConn because I wanted to go outside of Maine and immerse myself in a completely different environment,” says Alicia Vose, CLAS ’08, whose first-year dormitory had more people in it than her hometown of Grand Lake Stream, Maine.

While there might not have been a lot do in such a small town, Vose filled her schedule here with extracurricular activities. As a communications disorders major, she was a student researcher in Dr. Ludo Max’s speech physiology and motor control laboratory. She was the president of the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association at UConn, and she played clarinet in the UConn marching band.

 “UConn, out of all the schools that I visited, offered the best opportunity to sort of ‘dip into a lot of different areas’ and try things out, so I’m really happy that I came here,” she says.

Originally an engineering major, Vose switched to communications disorders after working with a deaf colleague at The Jackson Laboratory on Mount Desert Island in Maine, where she had a research internship to study the genetic effects of obesity.

“Working with him taught me that there’s a distinction between being deaf and being a member of the Deaf community. I read up on speech pathology and audiology and got really interested in it. I took introductory courses and absolutely fell in love with it,” she says.

Over the past year, Vose has worked with Dr. Max studying delayed auditory feedback and adaptation to new sensory motor mappings in individuals who stutter.

“One of the things I love about the field is how much research is still needed. I love the bridge of research to clinical work and trials. There are a lot of fundamental things that are still left to be investigated.”

Vose will cross her own bridge this fall as she moves from being a UConn graduate to pursuing a master’s degree in speech pathology at George Washington University. She plans to become a clinically certified speech pathologist and to pursue a doctoral degree in speech and motor control.

“There are millions of people affected by communications disorders that not only complicate their ability to speak effectively but also affect their personal relationships and how they live their lives. I’m really excited to be in a field that will help people and have a big impact.” – Curran Kennedy, CLAS ‘08