Mike Niconchuk
When graduating senior Mike Niconchuk leaves the Hill today, he will be leaving behind one of Tufts' most successful student-led interdisciplinary programs: Building Understanding through International Learning and Development (BUILD). BUILD is based on educating students in sustainable development, both in theory and in practice, through partnerships with rural communities. Niconchuk and a friend came up with the idea for the current form of BUILD in their freshman year.
"It actually started with a rejection from a former version of the program," Niconchuk said. "I applied for that program ... and they said sure, you can help us do some research. My friend and I took that idea and ran with it. We wanted to make it just students working directly with communities. We gave them the proposal, and they absolutely loved the idea. When we said we were freshmen, they didn't believe us."
In the summer of 2008, Niconchuk helped lead BUILD's research trip to Santa Anita la Unión, Guatemala. From the research conducted that summer, the students established a plan for overall community development, and BUILD Guatemala was subsequently formed. The program has been a success in terms of community development in Santa Anita, but Niconchuk says it's about more than just that for him.
"In my mind, all of that is completely overshadowed by those students who are younger than me who say I've inspired them," he said. "It's about the people that work there, students who have no idea, no experience with these types of things, plunged into adult situations, without anyone to hold their hand. If I've served any role with that process, that's great."
While BUILD may have been the defining feature of Niconchuk's time at Tufts, he has also been involved in other research initiatives. In 2009, Niconchuk won the Anne E. Borghesani Memorial Prize for research in international relations for a project on Iranian politics and economic development in Bolivia.
"One of the downfalls of being busy, of investing so much of your identity in things you do and projects you design: It's very easy to lose yourself in those things and forget the appropriate sources of validation in your life: family, friends and people who love you," Niconchuk said.
As for the future, Niconchuk says his plans are wide open.
"I feel I've built up so much momentum in college, I want to take some time off to breathe," he said. "I'm waiting on something where I can utilize my skills and passions to their potential. I've got a couple of ideas, and we'll see what comes to fruition."
—by Angelina Rotman
--
Matthew Kincaid
One thing Tufts students aren't short on is impressive résumés, and graduating senior Matthew Kincaid is hardly an exception. A first-generation college student from St. Louis, Mo., Kincaid applied to be and was accepted as a Tisch Scholar for Citizenship and Public Service as a freshman, and he has been an actively involved citizen since.
He has volunteered at Boston's Asian Community Development Corporation, writing curricula for race and ethnicity awareness education and for the Middlesex Courts Juvenile Diversion Program, acting as a mentor to first-time juvenile offenders. He is a member of the historically black fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha, gave the student address at Tufts' Black Solidarity Day celebration in 2009, and has spent time in his home state volunteering as a coordinator for St. Louis Gateway Homeless Services.
But countless accolades aside, Kincaid's involvement in the push for an Africana studies department is what he believes defines his four years at Tufts, a time that he admits has been a constant struggle.
"Unfortunately, I wasn't able to have the same dream college experience that everyone else has," he said. "I've spent a lot of time fighting for a community that affirms all its students."
Kincaid said that Tufts, while outwardly accepting of all its students, pointedly ignores the issues of race that inevitably surface at a predominantly white university. Speaking from personal experience, Kincaid feels as though Tufts has long turned a blind eye to the true experiences of its students of color.
"I'm passionate because I've personally experienced a lot of trials at the university based on my racial experience here," he said, adding that he has been the subject of racial slurs and police harassment.
"Tufts in particular has done a very poor job in dealing with these issues."
Kincaid drew attention not only to harassment issues, but also to the retention rate of students and faculty of color, as well as the inclusion of ethnic studies in the Tufts curriculum. He has fought particularly hard over the last four years to make ethnic studies — Africana Studies in particular — a reality here.
"We don't just want to study next to people of different ethnicities and cultures, but to study about different ethnicities and cultures," he said.
Kincaid believes that without an academic program to back up these issues' legitimacy, there will continue to be a lack of dialogue about the struggles that people of color — at Tufts and beyond — deal with, only making it easier for students and faculty here to ignore problems that many of them have never had to face.
"I believe all students should grow from having to lean into discomfort," he said. "We need a university that pushes students to lean into that discomfort."
Kincaid believes the university is headed in the right direction, citing both this year's April Open House, where current students talked to prospective students about the racial climate at Tufts, and the headway the movement for an Africana studies department is making as evidence that the Tufts community is ready to open a dialogue about uncomfortable issues.
Having spent four years dedicated to building a community that can openly tackle issues of race, Kincaid may have missed out on some aspects of a typical college experience, but he emphasizes the necessity of that sacrifice.
"Someone has to stand up for these particular issues. … Otherwise generation after generation of students [will] pass without having a real stake in this university," he said.
—by Falcon Reese
--
James Mackenzie
"If you ever have to run away from an alligator, run away in a zigzag line, because they can't turn as quickly so you'll escape them," graduating senior James Mackenzie said. Billed as "the guy who knows everything," it comes as no surprise that after graduating, Mackenzie will be returning to Google — where he interned last summer — to start his career.
Mackenzie, an economics and community health double major, interned for Google's Building Opportunities for Leadership & Development program. "What I did was work on their international benefits team. I did a lot of work with their different offices in Asia, as well as with EMEA — Europe, the Middle East and Africa. I was just trying to work with the benefit specialists there and streamline what we offer in America to the other offices."
Mackenzie, who has also worked at Tufts' Women's Center and as a research assistant at a Spanish design firm while studying abroad in Madrid, said that he was pleasantly surprised by his first exposure to the corporate world.
"You hear about how strict, cold and dressed-up [the corporate scene is], but everyone at Google is surprisingly down-to-earth. They're chill and personable while still extremely driven," Mackenzie said. "You'd be surprised as to what they're interested in: sailing, dancing, yoga. Everyone brought those special elements of themselves to work, and I learned a lot about collaborating and working on a team."
No stranger to extracurricular activities himself, Mackenzie has participated in several dance endeavors, including Tufts Dance Collective, Spirit of Color Dance Troupe and Tufts Dance Marathon.
He spent his entire junior year in Madrid, an experience he said he would repeat "in a heartbeat."
"I got to see the world," Mackenzie said. "Never in a million years would I have thought that I would have traveled so much of another continent."
The increased fluency he acquired in Spain also opened the door for him to travel to Guatemala with the Tufts Timmy Foundation this past winter break.
"[In Guatemala], we'd hold a mobile clinic and have patients come in," Mackenzie said. "We had doctors and a pharmacy where we could prescribe certain things as they were needed."
While it may be easy for some students to tune out social and political issues while immersed in the schoolwork at Tufts, Mackenzie said he made a point to stay up to date with the news and embrace differing stances.
"I love when I can debate," he said. "Especially when I can take something from the conversation and learn something new. … I'm more of a problem-solver than anything else. I love giving advice, and I'm very good at doing so while still staying out of the picture. I can help you see both sides of things."
His is a personality that seems tailor-made for Google.
His job will begin as a rotational program in which he won't know exactly what he'll be doing until he's assigned to it. He will be working for the Human Resources division and will work on three separate teams during his contract there, switching every nine months. After this trial period is over, he'll be able to choose which one he wants to be on permanently.
"While I don't know exactly where I'm going to go yet or what I'm going to do yet, I want the work that I end up doing to have an impact and help people," Mackenzie said. "I'm very interested in public policy. … I'm very interested in marginalized communities, so if I can equalize the playing field for some, then I would say that that's a success."
—by Amelia Quinn
--
Signe Porteshawver
Though she hails from Davenport, Iowa, graduating senior Signe Porteshawver didn't know much about farming besides corn when she matriculated to Tufts. Now, four years later, sustainable agriculture has defined her academic career and become a life-long passion.
"It's so interesting to grow up in a place like Davenport because Iowa imports 98 percent of their food — of course I had no idea about any of this," Porteshawver said. "I never even fathomed agriculture because you don't see it. ... I learned so much when I came here about agriculture back home."
Porteshawver's involvement with sustainability at Tufts began her sophomore year after she read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by journalist and activist Michael Pollan. Porteshawver also credits her growing interest in the environment at the time to getting a bike and discovering more people and places around Cambridge.
"I think that really changed my outlook on things because I didn't realize how it's just freedom," Porteshawver said. "You can go so far and to so many places people normally don't go ... and then it's just like a bike community. You end up meeting other people who ride bikes, and bike people talk about environmental stuff."
As her interest in agricultural practices around the globe grew, Porteshawver turned her focus closer to home. Along with the help of Yosefa Ehrlich (LA '10), Porteshawver created the garden located downhill on Tufts' Medford/Somerville campus. The two also worked with students at the Friedman School of Nutrition and Science Policy to develop an Experimental College course in practical gardening and sustainable food systems. Along with being called a "bio-head" by Associate Professor of Biology George Ellmore, Porteshawver considers the day the class was approved one of her best undergraduate memories.
The other major mark Porteshawver has made on environmentalism at Tufts is the redesign of the old student group ECO into the current Tufts Sustainability Collective with fellow graduating senior Sally Sharrow. The two looked to create a more efficient structure for Tufts' environmental initiatives that prompted students to take action instead of simply discussing ideas. The collective is now the umbrella organization overseeing four main groups: Students for a Just and Sustainable Future, Tufts Bikes, Tom Thumb's Garden and Tufts Against Plastic.
Porteshawver wrote her senior thesis on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and alternative economics and will be taking these ideas with her as she moves on from Tufts. Having already worked at numerous farming and outdoor-related nonprofits in the area, Porteshawver is excited to apprentice at Drumlin Farm this summer tending crops and selling them at the farmers market. Afterward, she wants to work more with CSA, in which members of a community financially support a local farm in return for produce on a regular basis.
"I really want to start a Boston-area CSA coalition," Porteshawver said. "I also want to have an urban farming venture where I compost from restaurants and raise chickens and grow mushrooms."
Regardless of what path she chooses next, Porteshawver is pleased that, at Tufts at least, she is leaving a greener trail behind her.
—by Sarah Strand
--
Alexis Sue Yan Yuen
Graduating senior Alexis Sue Yan Yuen founded the LUX China Care Fashion Show, has worked as a Tisch Scholar and graduates today with a dual degree from Tufts and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She now knows that she wants her life's work to combine her love of art with her talent for marketing, but she wasn't always so sure.
Her initial aspirations included becoming a doctor, so she took a year off after freshman year and spent time in Ghana as a medical volunteer for the organization Unite for Sight. She ended up taking a different approach than she had intended, spending more time documenting eye surgeries as a photojournalist. When her time in Ghana was over, she volunteered for the Red Cross in Sichuan, China, after the devastating earthquake.
"I thought doing pre-med was the best way to help people, but after trying to be pre-med in Ghana, I realized to be creative is the best way to contribute," Yuen said. "I can help make an impact even doing things that I really like and am really good at. I came back because I knew that my first reason coming to Tufts was right, to focus on civic engagement and internationalism."
Yuen says this was just the experience she needed to move ahead.
"I found out what I liked, and I could go on at full speed without doubt once I came back," she said.
Yuen came back and began her first project as a Tisch Scholar in which she worked with the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence. She worked with its youth empowerment program, helping to equip high school students with the language to talk about these personal issues and creating photo essays with students about their own experiences. She spent this year working with the Chinese Progressive Association on marketing for their new W/Y Gallery.
It was initially a challenge to work as an international student in a program benefitting local communities, according to Yuen, who has lived in Hong Kong and London.
"People were kind of skeptical with how much I could help because they knew one day I would leave and were scared I would leave halfway [through]," she said. "Getting people to let me work with them was hard. I learned more, and throughout the past few years, it has changed from a disadvantage to almost an advantage. I'm almost like a cultural ambassador, asking people to think from a different perspective."
Yuen sees collaboration as the root of all her successes, especially in establishing the LUX China Care Fashion show, which started as a small event and this year sold out Cohen Auditorium. Proceeds from the show go to China Care, an organization that provides medical care to orphans in China. She credits the event's other organizers, the diverse group of models who walked and an audience from all over Tufts for the event's growing success.
"There's such a strong community of people who care about the world in the way I do," she said. "In the gap year, I was alone in many countries, and although I was okay doing certain things, it was difficult struggling alone. Everyone at Tufts is active on a certain issue and that pushed me to work harder on everything I do, and that's something I'm going to miss next year — having a supportive community."
—by Alexa Sasanow
--
Tomoaki Takaki
Looking back at his college years, graduating senior Tomoaki Takaki talks proudly about meeting new people and taking full advantage of what Tufts has to offer.
Takaki is part of the small group of Jumbos who belong to the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), the United States' collegiate officer commissioning program. He was awarded both the Tufts Army ROTC award and the Distinguished Military Graduate award, the latter of which is given to the nation's top 20 percent of ROTC seniors — Takaki ranked within the nation's top 1 percent.
"It's nice to try to excel and work really hard and have your efforts rewarded," he said.
As an ROTC cadet, Takaki has had the opportunity to meet students from Harvard, MIT, Wellesley and several other schools.
"Some of my good friends I would've never met without doing ROTC," he said.
Although ROTC has been very rewarding, especially in terms of enhancing his leadership skills, Takaki said that adjusting to the program's lifestyle has not always been easy.
"I am a little atypical for a college student," he said, adding that unlike most college students, he had to learn to go to sleep early at night and study in the mornings.
Takaki is graduating with a degree in international relations (IR) with a concentration in the Middle East and South Asia. He explained that through the academic opportunities Tufts offers, he has been able to explore his interests both on and off campus.
Takaki participated in the 2010 Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) Symposium on South Asia and traveled to India as a part of the program. There, he was able to work on his research on youth voting trends. In addition, he has been an active member of the Institute of Global Leadership's Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services (ALLIES), through which he also found an internship at the U.S. Army War College. He is also a member of the Sigma Iota Rho International Relations Honor Society, Beta Chi Chapter.
Originally from Japan, Takaki explained that his exposure to the international community started when he was very young. Later, at Tufts, he met many international students who later became his great friends and his inspiration to both study IR and to become an International Orientation Host Advisor during his sophomore year.
Throughout his Tufts career, Takaki has had the opportunity to travel around the world — to India, with EPIIC, as well as to Egypt, Morocco and Hawaii.
"That has colored my perceptions," he said. "It has been cool to go to these places and visit my Tufts friends."
This summer, Takaki will be interning at the Pentagon, followed by his initial five-month officer training. After that, he hopes to find a job to complement his part-time commissioning as an Army Reserve Second Lieutenant.
Takaki leaves with the satisfaction of knowing that he got as much as he could out of Tufts and eagerly looks forward to continuing to meet interesting people in his journey after college.
—by Emilia Luna
