University
First Recipients of USC Africa Fund Named
- Silva Sevlian, Emily Taymor and Daniel Alvarado, from left, will be traveling to Ethiopia, Senegal and Mozambique, respectively.
- Photo/Dietmar Quistorf
By Lauren Walser on March 29, 2010 7:54 AM
Three USC undergraduates were chosen as the inaugural recipients of the new USC Africa Student Fund, which they will use to pursue independent research projects this year on the African continent.
The recipients are Daniel Alvarado, a senior art history major, Silva Sevlian, a senior pursuing a joint B.A./M.A. degree in print journalism and public diplomacy, and Emily Taymor, a freshman film production major and health promotion minor.
Of the 19 applications the selection committee received, the three selected stood apart from the rest because of the unusual areas of research they proposed, said Adam Clayton Powell III, USC’s vice provost for globalization.
“They’re studying things that weren’t expected,” Powell said. “And through the applications we received, we found areas of research around USC that we in the provost’s office had not known before.”
Alvarado is traveling to Mozambique for one month to continue his research on the influence of Portuguese colonial urbanism and architecture, a project he began during a semester abroad in Brazil. He will document Mozambique’s architectural styles and traditional clothing, looking for visual similarities and differences to those of Brazil, and he will resubmit his findings to the professors he worked with in South America.
Sevlian will be studying the Armenian Ethiopian community in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, focusing on the role of Christianity as a tool for public diplomacy between Armenia and Ethiopia. During her 16-day trip, she will conduct interviews with members of the Armenian Ethiopian community while taking video and audio footage and photographs to document the shrinking population. Upon her return to the United States, she will create a Web site documenting the research.
Taymor, who is traveling to Senegal for two weeks this summer, will work with Moussa D. Bocoume, a Senegalese doctoral candidate at USC, to create a film aimed at building awareness of pressing health and human rights issues in the country. She also will set up a nonprofit to promote the film as a tool for education and advocacy.
Per terms of the grants, the students will present their findings to the university community this fall.
The Africa Student Fund was established last year in response to the growing student and faculty interest in Africa. More than 200 people attended a networking and informational event hosted jointly by the Office of Globalization and University Relations to gauge USC’s presence in Africa in late 2007, demonstrating a vast university-wide interest.
“There is far more going on [regarding] Africa at USC than we previously knew,” said Powell, who, along with his wife, Irene Solet, gave a $100,000 gift to help establish the fund last year.
For more information on the fund, or to make a donation to it, visit http://globalization.usc.edu/office/africa_student_fund.html
TAGS: globalization
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