Vinson-Roosevelt Fellows Show What They Know
Having spent a semester working alongside faculty-mentors at the Vinson Institute, the four undergraduate interns from the Vinson-Roosevelt Fellows Program presented their final projects on environmental, law enforcement, and international topics for an audience on Tuesday.
The spring semester cohort of the Vinson-Roosevelt Fellows Program was chosen through a close partnership between the Institute, the University of Georgia (UGA) Honors Program, and the UGA chapter of the Roosevelt Institute, a national student-run think tank. “By collaborating with Honors and Roosevelt to recruit this cohort, we really came away with some talented, driven, and bright students,” said Institute Director Jennifer Frum. “We were able to match the diversity of interests of these students with the diverse array of expertise present in the Institute’s faculty.”
UGA Honors Program Director David Williams was enthusiastic about the program’s value to UGA students, stating, “As faculty advisor to the UGA Roosevelt chapter, I am very appreciative of the close collaboration we enjoy with the Vinson Institute and the marvelous opportunities for students that our partnership provides.”
UGA sophomore Camille Gregory from Brentwood, Tennessee, presented her research about underage alcohol consumption and the effectiveness of different tactics by law enforcement and others to decrease it. Gregory, a geography major, worked with Rich Clark, who manages the Institute’s Survey Research Unit.
Rob McDowell and Jason Evans from the Institute’s Environmental Policy Program were mentors to two Vinson Fellows this semester—Malin Dartnell, junior from Madison, Georgia, and Calley Mersmann, senior from Snellville, Georgia.
Mersmann supplemented her environmental engineering studies by researching the potential effects of sea level rise on Coastal Georgia communities. She incorporated geographic information systems (GIS) imagery to compare public perception of the threat with the actual likely impacts of sea level rise.
Dartnell, an ecology major, presented information about the water supply for Georgia’s North Metro water region and possible scenarios in case of a drought more severe than the one that threatened the Southeast in 2007 and 2008.
Political science major Nathaniel Ament-Stone worked with the Institute’s International Center director Rusty Brooks to study the possible bubble developing in Beijing, China’s, housing market. Ament-Stone has also been chosen to study in Shanghai this summer at Fudan University through a scholarship presented by the Vinson Institute.
The Institute will welcome a new cohort of Fellows in the fall.
Images from the Vinson-Roosevelt Fellows Spring 2011 Cohort
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