Three Scripps College students were recently awarded Mary W. Johnson and J. Stanley Johnson Student Research Awards for their interdisciplinary projects. This year’s selection committee will provide $3,000 summer grant funds to Rayna Brooks ’07 for her Movement Toward a Potential Animal Model of Autism: Neuroanatomical Analysis of Reelin-deficient Mice, Elizabeth Obreza ’08 for her Restricted Independence in a Newly Independent Country: The Disabled in Slovenia, and Marin Sarve-Tarr ’08 for her Collecting the Collective Memory.
Rayna Brooks will be investigating the biological basis of autism beyond the scope of psychology. Previous research has indicated that the reelin-deficient (+/rl) mutant mouse may provide a suitable model for autism. This summer, Brooks will be working with Dr. C. Sue Carter at the University of Illinois at Chicago to further investigate this issue. Specifically, she will be performing neuroanatomical analyses on reelin-deficient and control mice in order to determine what structural differences exist between them and how these differences may underlie the cause of autism.
Elizabeth Obreza will be traveling to Ljubljana, Slovenia for a month to research the independence of its disabled citizens. Formerly part of communist Yugoslavia, Slovenia gained its independence 15 years ago. Anecdotal evidence suggests that disabled Slovenians have achieved a greater amount of autonomy since then. With the assistance of an interpreter, Obreza will be interviewing government officials, members of advocate groups for the disabled, doctors, specialists, companies and other citizens about the medical, social, political and professional opportunities for disabled Slovenians and whether these have changed since the fall of communism.
Marin Sarve-Tarr’s project was inspired by her internship with filmmaker Rithy Panh through the Humanities Institute at Scripps College. She will be working at a film archive in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for two months, translating archival materials and database entries from French to English. Sarve-Tarr explains, “The center hopes to revive the Cambodian memory and culture since the Khmer Rouge Genocide in 1975 through collecting and archiving various types of media documents, photos, audio recordings, films, and newsreels.”
The Mary W. Johnson and J. Stanley Johnson Student Research Awards are given on a competitive basis for student-initiated, interdisciplinary summer projects. For more information, please contact the Dean of Faculty Office, ext. 18178.