Congratulations to Max Calman and Benjamin Cunningham who were both selected for the Luther Rice Fellowship.
Luther Rice Undergraduate Research Fellowships are part of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences comprehensive undergraduate initiative to promote discovery- and inquiry-based education throughout the undergraduate experience at GW. These Fellowships offer support for student research carried out in collaboration with, and under the guidance of, at least one faculty mentor.
Max Calman
"While higher education has historically been viewed as a public good and left relatively untouched, the global turn to neoliberalism has led to increasing reliance on market-based models of educational funding. Policies have increasingly emphasized the marketization of education, resulting in a shift towards more corporate models that prioritize financial gain over education quality. My research, with mentorship from Dr. Carlos Bustamante, intends to build on the current body of work studying the neoliberal university by conducting a qualitative study of GW faculty to garner their lived experience in teaching and working under structures that prioritize efficiency, productivity, and profitability over academic freedom and intellectual inquiry."
Benjamin Cunningham
"My research examines how Ukrainian artists process and document their experiences with war and the subsequent impact of their work on foreign audiences. The exhibition "We Know Who They Are...," opening on Ukrainian Independence Day in Gallery 102, thematically showcases more than 25 Ukrainian artists and artifacts directly responding to wartime atrocities. The research seeks to understand how art can serve as a powerful tool for documenting war and whether it can shape audience perceptions, potentially leading to increased advocacy for Ukraine. Moreover, the project intends to bridge the academic gap between international affairs and fine arts to foster a more nuanced understanding of the war's impact through a cross-disciplinary lens."