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| Hamline Magazine, Spring 2007 |
Relevant, real and reaffirming
Undergraduate research, thanks to the Carol Young Anderson Endowed Fund
By Kelly Westhoff
Peter Elwell ’03 recently returned from Botswana. He spent two and half years there as a Peace Corp volunteer helping the government coordinate its HIV/AIDS education, prevention and treatment programs. Roughly one-third of Botswana's population is living with HIV/AIDS, Elwell said.
While his experience as an international volunteer was life altering, Elwell credits his years at Hamline for his readiness to take on the task.
“My time at Hamline really got me to Botswana,” he said. “When I came to Hamline, I didn”t go for the most marketable of degrees. I decided to study something that my heart was really in.” Elwell graduated with majors in social justice and religion. “My sole purpose in getting a liberal arts education was to gain a better understanding of the world at large and to learn how to be a better citizen of the world,” he said.
Elwell fulfilled his quest. A term paper he wrote in a sophomore social justice class sparked his senior honors project. “Just talking about social justice issues really overwhelmed me and I started to wonder how I would be able to maintain involvement in the issues over a long period of time,” he said. “Reading and talking about a problem actually becomes disempowering at a point. You spend all this time learning about the issue but never doing anything about it,” he said.
With guidance from professors Earl Schwartz and Deanna Johnson, Elwell created an oral history project. He interviewed 12 long-time community activists about their work, their inspiration, their downfalls and their triumphs. He identified shared themes from each interview and discovered some key thought patterns activists use to help them sustain their enthusiasm for work in the social justice realm.
As his project progressed, Elwell applied for funding from Hamline's Collaborative Research program. The program awards undergraduate students with stipends to help them pursue their individual research interests. Some students use the money to off-set living expenses while they immerse themselves in their project; others use the funds to travel to national undergraduate conferences and present their work. Students participating in the program pair with a faculty advisor and attend weekly meetings where all recipients discuss their progress.
The remainder of this article can be found in the Spring 2007 issue of Hamline Magazine.
To learn more about Hamline University, visit www.hamline.edu.
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