SENIOR COHORT

conviction

Avi Ackerman

Pooja Enagala

Ingrid Piña

Marisa Tiscareño

Bronson Zhou

Avi Ackerman

Plan II/Linguistics

The first week of classes of my junior year had barely started in 2021 when I left Austin for London on a flight booked with the help of my Dedman enrichment fund. I was on my way to Newcastle University representing my student activist group at the first international conference on the Xinjiang Crisis, where experts on Uyghur history and culture would meet with lawyers and genocide scholars to trace how the atrocities in China’s Central Asian colony began, and how those of us on the outside could end them. After a surreal week of travel made possible by lecture streaming and the transatlantic time-zone difference, I returned to my first in-person semester since my freshman year.

My Fall 2021 semester was memorable for two classes—Origins of Modern Japan, and Linguistic Typology, a graduate course covering my favorite subfield within linguistics—and for my work outside of class on calling attention to the genocide in Xinjiang. I was so glad to help a diaspora Uyghur activist describe her experiences in an article that eventually appeared in the New Yorker, and I was profoundly moved by Abduweli Ayup, the linguist and camp survivor who spoke at the virtual UT event I arranged.

I had planned on spending the Spring 2022 semester abroad, having been accepted to programs in Japan and Kyrgyzstan, but neither worked out. By that point, though, I had learned to temper all expectations which Covid could interfere with, and I ended up having what was in many ways my best semester yet. The classes I took on shamanism, Jewish nationalist historiography, and early colonial Latin American history were a constant joy to attend. I was nominated by UT for the Truman Scholarship, and though I was not selected as a finalist, I was able to rework the ideas I had developed in the policy proposal component of the application into an award-winning article on the Xinjiang Crisis. At the end of the semester, as I began to despair at my chances of getting abroad at all, I was notified that I’d won Plan II’s Rowe Koehl Scholarship. I’d proposed to travel to Istanbul for language practice in the heart of the Uyghur diaspora, and then, after wandering across Turkey, to end in Georgia, a country I’d fallen in love with the first time I heard its music years before.

I spent nearly a month abroad in what was unquestionably one of the best experiences of my life. I spoke Uyghur on the street and picked up a surprising amount of Turkish. I visited a master luthier and bought a baglama saz (a Turkish stringed instrument) for when take I lessons at UT in my senior year. And I fell in love.

I’m writing now, in the summer of 2022, on the last day of six weeks of advanced Yiddish classes at the Yivo Institute in New York, where I’ve been able to study thanks to the generosity of the Dedman family. I am so grateful for this and the many other irreplaceable experiences that they have brought into my life.

Pooja Enagala

Plan II/Neuroscience

Perhaps it’s the hodgepodge of experiences I’ve accumulated in the past three years or the time warping ramifications of the pandemic, but it seems that the cliched “college has flown by” rings true. As I enter my senior year in the fall of 2022, I feel a bit ashamed of how easy it has been to take this time for granted, but also so grateful for the opportunities I’ve been afforded.

Spending weekly meetings with my cohort has been such a refreshing routine in the past year; the picnic tables at central market have become such a welcome and familiar oasis away from the chaos of campus. Our conviction cohort meetings have morphed into a combination of group therapy, stimulating sociopolitical discussion, and a game of catch-up on life. One of my favorite memories with my cohort this year was munching on homemade arepas for brunch at Ingrid’s apartment. It’s so gratifying seeing how each of our paths have evolved from how we intended them when we entered UT.

I’ve been lucky to have learning opportunities that supplement my courses and interests so well. For the past two years, I’ve been researching how discrimination precludes long term heart health issues in people of color under Dr. Cheadle and Dr. Goosby in the LifeHD Lab. I’ve also been able to supplement my lab experience as a biology lab TA. Additionally, one of my favorite experiences that is exclusive to UT has been the KIPP mentorship program. I was lucky enough to be selected as a member of Plan II Krewe for the past two years, where we mentor low income students of color enrolled in KIPP college prep and in turn, learn about the deep roots of educational inequality. Our discourse included integration in schools, policy sources of the achievement gap, and gentrification in Austin. I was able to meet with my mentee both virtually, and later, in person, which was so gratifying.

Some of my favorite experiences this past year have been with the people I’ve met through various organizations at UT. I was lucky enough to be selected as a member of Texas Orange Jackets this year, and some of my favorite memories were spending time at the Settlement home, our philanthropy. I was recently elected as a captain of my dance team, Texas Raas, and I am so grateful that I’ve been able to continue to explore my passion for dance throughout college in tandem with my intellectual explorations. It has been exhilarating to travel the country for national competitions after being homebound for so long, and winning our national championships this past year was definitely something I will never forget about my college experience.

I can’t wait to dedicate my senior year to all the people and things I’ve realized matter the most to me over the past six semesters here at UT, and I am so blessed that the Dedman Scholar family has been a constant among those. I am looking forward to savoring every Monday evening I can get for the next year.

Ingrid Piña

Liberal Arts Honors/Humanities/Mobilities Ethnography through Film & Fiction

What a year––of being back at UT Austin, living with Téa, my best friend and a fellow Dedman, going every other week to Central Market to convene with the Conviction cohort, dreaming for the future and embracing the chaos of the present!

In the fall of 2021, I continued working for Texas Global, UT’s international academics office, as their Communications Undergraduate Associate. I wrote features on UT students and faculty excelling and collaborating internationally! In the spring, I became the Marketing and Communications Fellow for the Student Conservation Association, a nonprofit that I have been volunteering with since high school! I created a series of videos for their fundraising and outreach campaigns––a dream job to make content for an organization that I believe in. Filming outside in Houston and Austin, and sharing my trail crew stories, this position counted as my “Connecting Experience” for my Digital Arts and Media Bridging Disciplines Program (BDP) certificate. My BDP faculty mentor, Professor Ben Bays, gave me invaluable advice and inspiration throughout the experience. This summer, as I take a break from two years of remote part-time internships and pledge time to my own creative projects, I continue to look up to artists like Professor Bays.

Throughout this past academic year, I have embraced every opportunity to write, both formally in LAH poetry workshop classes and for UT’s Prickly Literary and Art Magazine, and informally on Tuesday nights with Dedman friends at Austin Poetry Slam. In the fall, my poems received an honorable mention for the 2021 Roy Crane Prize for Literature. In the spring, after submitting ‘A Sonnet for Study Abroad’ in the National Security Language Initiative for Youth’s Storytelling Competition, I was selected to attend and thoroughly enjoyed a storytelling workshop with The Moth in Washington, D.C.! Around the same time, I learned that my collection of 10 poems titled Ragweed Body had won the Edna Meudt Memorial Award in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (NFSPS) College Undergraduate Competition. I attended the NFSPS annual convention in Ohio in June 2022, at which I was able to read from my collection and sell the first copies of my first published poetry chapbook!

I feel excited and made vulnerable by all this good news––on one hand, I’m so grateful for the opportunity to share my work, but am scared to do so beyond my small circle of poetry friends (many of them being Dedmans!). But while I doubt the strength of my writing, I don’t doubt the strength of the support I’m given at UT through the Dedman Distinguished Scholars Program (DDSP), and more recently the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) Program. I joined the MMUF program at the end of this semester, through which my journey towards applying for post-baccalaureate scholarships and Ph.D. programs will be invigorated and supported. I’m so grateful to the UT faculty and coursework that has pushed the “Dedman pivot” in my undergraduate plans; I’m no longer an International Relations and Global Studies major! I’m in the Humanities Honors program working with Dr. Linda Mayhew to design my own major titled “Mobilities Ethnography through Film and Fiction.”

With the guidance of my MMUF faculty mentor Dr. Heather Hindman, I’m working on independent research and creative projects this summer. I’ve been traveling to Spain, Peru and Colombia to visit my Venezuelan relatives that have left Caracas. Seeing these family members in-person for the first time in a long time has made this summer intense, emotional, and so rewarding. In the Fall of 2022, I will be studying migrations, borders and transnational identities on a School for International Training program in Oaxaca, Mexico. I feel so grateful to DDSP’s enrichment fund and the encouragement of Dr. Musick and Julie Casey that allows me the opportunity to join this unique research-based program that visits both Mexico’s northern and southern borders. As I get closer to my family, to understanding the larger systems that affect our migratory history, I feel closer than ever to the “why” behind my work and my studies. An endless thank you to the Dedman family for supporting my endless endeavors.

Marisa Tiscareño

Plan II, Business Honors, Health & Society

I spent my junior year living in three cities: Austin, Madrid, and Washington, D.C. I am so grateful for the Dedman program – after a year and a half of online classes taken from my Texas bedroom, having the opportunity to travel has been amazing.

In the fall of 2021, I continued taking my major classes, including biomedical ethics, finance, and organizational behavior. I really enjoyed biomedical ethics – this class built on my foundational knowledge from Plan II philosophy, and I was able to discuss and debate some complex health dilemmas with other passionate students.

In January of 2022, I boarded a non-stop flight from Dallas to Madrid, beginning my semester abroad in Spain. I enrolled in business and Spanish classes at Universidad Pontificia Comillas, a small private school in downtown Madrid. It had been 4 years since my last Spanish class, so I had to recall a lot of the grammar rules. Despite my rusty conjugations, being able to practice in everyday contexts was honestly pretty fun. One of my favorite parts of the semester was travelling, especially throughout Spain – highly recommend Mallorca! Overall, I cannot speak highly enough of study abroad. Experiencing a new culture, making lifetime friends, and learning how to go with the flow (ask me about some interesting hostel stays) were all invaluable experiences.

This summer (2022), I am interning with Boston Consulting Group in Washington, D.C, aiding a pharmaceutical company with their commercial strategy. My team includes consultants with PhDs, MBAs, and MDs, and I’ve felt very lucky to learn from them every day. Moving from one country capital to another has been exciting – in Madrid I lived blocks away from the Royal Palace, and my D.C. apartment is right along Embassy Row. Austin has big shoes to fill.

In the fall of 2022-2023 academic year, I will be starting on my Plan II thesis. My supervisors are in the School of Public Health and the history department, and I am excited to research the history of redlining and food insecurity in Austin. My thesis should be a nice culmination of the past 3 years of coursework in business, liberal arts, and public health.

Heading into my senior year at UT feels surreal. The 2022-2023 year will be my first and only full year on campus—with the pandemic and study abroad, I have yet to be in Austin for two consecutive semesters. Despite all the time away, I still feel like I have a home within the Dedman program. The scholars and mentors have provided amazing support throughout the last three years, and the Dedman family’s generosity is deeply appreciated.