Goodbye graduates, and good luck!

CLAS graduates are leaving the College for new careers, graduate school, or medical school. Featured here are profiles of some members of the Class of '08. Check back for new profiles as graduation approaches.

Leah Brown-Wilusz

Winning a prize at a national professional conference is a gratifying feat, especially for Leah Brown-Wilusz , CLAS '08, an undergraduate who competed against graduate students at a national biology meeting.

As a senior, Brown-Wilusz presented her research poster at the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology Conference in San Antonio , Texas . Although nearly all of her fellow presenters were graduate students, Brown-Wilusz left Texas with the prize for best student poster in the field of vertebrate morphology.

Its title: "Ontogenetic effects of hatching plasticity in spotted salamanders due to larval and egg predators."

"It was a really great experience to present my research and get feedback on it. It was a four-day conference and a really great environment to be in because there are so many exchanges of ideas," says Brown-Wilusz.

"It was awesome to have my project and presentation thought of so highly; and to beat out graduate students was really cool. I was pretty shocked when I won. The prize was given on best poster and presentation, and I loved my research, so it was really easy to talk about."

Brown-Wilusz came to UConn from Torrrington High School and majored in ecology and evolutionary biology degree as an honors student in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She worked in Prof. Kurt Shwenk's laboratory under a graduate student mentor, Tobias Landberg, studying the body morphology of amphibians, specifically, salamanders.

"Working in the lab really helped me get a whole new perspective on science and research. It really gives me a lot more confidence in talking about my abilities in science," Brown-Wilusz says.

After graduation, she plans to teach after pursuing a one-year education degree.

"I want to inspire and make kids love science as much as I do," she says. "I want kids to think it's cool to draw out the cell cycle and go down to the river and pull up a bunch of muck." - Curran Kennedy, CLAS '08

Colleen Deasy

The debate on how to improve education for our nation's poor has been going on for decades, but Colleen Deasy , CLAS '08, is forging ahead with a new campaign, determined to produce results.

Deasy, a human development and family studies and English double major, brought Jumpstart, a national organization dedicated to enhancing the educational foundation for preschoolers, to the University of Connecticut .

She organized 45 other student volunteers to work with pre-school youngsters from low income families in Connecticut, helping to prepare the children for elementary school.

"Preschoolers are at a really interesting age and there's a lot of potential to do something beneficial. Studies have shown the importance of early intervention so we work on language, literacy, problem solving, and social skills," Deasy says.

"We work with children whose families are living below the poverty line because studies have shown that these children typically start school behind their more affluent peers in all of those areas."

Deasy, who is from North Falmouth , Massachusetts , and came to UConn from Falmouth High School , will continue her education at Boston College Law School where she plans to get a JD and a joint master's degree in education.

Deasy gives the most credit for her dedication to service to UConn's Community Outreach organization.

"Service is very important to me and I owe a lot of my personal and professional growth to Community Outreach. It inspired me to bring Jumpstart to campus and through it I've learned a lot of valuable skills that have taught me the value of service." - Curran Kennedy, CLAS '08

Phillis Kwentoh

Many UConn undergraduates look toward the future and wonder how they'll make their mark in the world. Phillis Kwentoh, CLAS '08, is making hers as we speak. 

Kwentoh, a journalism major with a double minor in human rights and African American studies, has always had an interest in photography. 

In October 2007 Kwentoh was featured in a juried art exhibit in Brooklyn, New York. Kareem Black, a celebrity photographer, was the exhibit curator. It was the perfect opportunity for Kwentoh to showcase her work. 

Kwentoh discovered her confidence as a photographer while on vacation with her family to her parents' native Nigeria, using her camera to capture a part of Nigeria 's unique culture.

One of Kwentoh's photos from that trip, Nwa Ifele, which in her family's native Igbo language means "shy child," was chosen by Black for the exhibit. 

Kwentoh, who has not taken an art class since attending Connecticut 's North Haven High School, understands the importance of photography. 

"The ability to tell a story without saying a single word is what attracted me to photography." 

After graduating in May, she plans to work as a photojournalist.

"I want to be a human rights advocate and use my photography to show people what's really going on in the world.  I want to capture powerful moments.  I want people to look at my photos and say, 'I understand what you're saying.'"  - Curran Kennedy, CLAS '08

Nikita Lakdawala

At just 21 years of age, Nikita Lakdawala , CLAS '08, from Watertown, Conn., has combined a world of experience with her double major in molecular and cell biology and an individualized major that she created, health care and social inequality.

A graduate of Watertown High School, at UConn she has studied abroad in London, volunteered to serve the homeless and hungry in Boston, New York, and Willimantic, Conn., and worked with the underprivileged in soup kitchens and farm fields.

"Even though it's such a large school, I've been able to get involved in community service programs. I think students, if they want to be involved, can find things to do," she said.

"It's not the same thing to read about something in a textbook as it is to see it firsthand."

To this end, Lakdawala organized her senior thesis around her volunteer work in Willimantic where she observed acute care at a clinic and gave health care talks a soup kitchen.

"Barriers to health care access and discrepancies between the poor and rich are big issues that need to be tackled," she says.

Ambition to reform U.S. health care led Lakdawala to London for a semester, where she visited hospitals and interviewed doctors.

"I think medicine now involves both medical and social aspects and it's more important now than ever to understand how these parties work together."

Next fall, she will begin studying for her own medical degree at UConn Medical School in Farmington . - Curran Kennedy, CLAS '08

Ryan Notti

Ryan Notti , CLAS '08, is headed for what he hopes will be a career as a physician-scientist at a large academic hospital, where he would have both clinical and research responsibilities.

He will work toward a combined MD/PhD from the Tri-institutional Medical Scientist Training Program, which offers an MD from Weill-Cornell Medical College and a PhD from Cornell, the Rockefeller University , or Sloan-Kettering Institute.

Notti, who is from Cheshire , Conn. , and graduated from Cheshire High School , came to UConn as a Nutmeg Scholar, a highly competitive UConn award. Two years ago he became UConn's first Goldwater Scholar, winning a merit scholarship that many consider to be the most prestigious award for undergraduates in the sciences.

A biology major, he was active in undergraduate research beginning in his freshman year, when he worked in the laboratory of physiology and neurobiology associate professor Joanne Conover, studying the effects of aging on stem cell populations in the mouse brain.

He was active in the Community Outreach program, serving as the student director for an after-school tutoring program.

At UConn's 2008 Scholars' Day, where Notti was the student speaker, he urged students to extend their commitment to community service beyond the volunteer projects they undertook as undergraduates.

“I believe that Scholars' Day recognizes more than our current achievements, it represents our collective potential: our potential to extend our knowledge beyond the classroom, and our potential to employ that gift in a manner that betters not only ourselves, but our communities and our world,” he said.

Monoswita Saha

Monoswita Saha, CLAS '08, a Bengali native who came to the U.S. when she was four years old, has returned to India two times for research projects she undertook as an undergraduate in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

A double major in economics and English, with a minor in India Studies, she has studied the impact of globalization on India as well as sustainable living and ecotourism and their potential benefits for rural areas.

She spent a significant amount of time in Indian villages, using her knowledge of the language to learn such things as the importance of organic practices for sustainable development and how rural areas can better connect with urban areas.

"Without wealth, you can't have development, but progress is defined by the degree of freedom, choice and mobility it gives people, not necessarily wealth," she says, citing the need for improved educational facilities in rural areas.

A graduate of Trumbull High School, Saha is also a short story author who has published her work in the campus magazines Long River Review and Catamaran .

After graduation, she may join Teach for America or a similar teaching program that benefits underprivileged populations.

Philip Shaw

Philip Shaw, who will receive his PhD degree in economics in May, had what one faculty member called "an unusually strong outcome" to his job search for an academic position.

Shaw had 18 interviews, 11 offers of trips to campuses, and six offers of tenure-track faculty positions at colleges ranging from Kenyon College, a small, private liberal arts college in Ohio where a third of the freshman class are National Merit scholars, to Kansas State University, a public university with more than 23,000 students.

In the fall, he will begin teaching economics at Fairfield University, the offer he accepted in order to be close to friends in the Northeast.

Shaw said his thesis topic, on educational corruption, was particularly interesting to potential employers.

He began working on it as an undergraduate economics major in the CLAS ('04), where he won a Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) award to study educational corruption in the Ukraine .

Christian Zimmermann, associate professor of economics, who was Shaw's undergraduate and graduate adviser, says that Shaw gathering his own data firsthand was rather unusual.

"He got a research grant, and he just did it. That's how he is," he says.

Shaw says he chose an academic career because "I really enjoyed teaching - it's something I need in my life."

Three PhD students graduating from economics this spring have academic jobs waiting for them. Besides Shaw, Nicholas Shunda received an offer at the University of Redlands in California, and Rasha Ahmed received an offer from Trinity College in Hartford .

The economics PhD market is well organized, says Zimmermann, with centralized advertising through the American Economics Association and a national meeting where students and employers schedule interviews.

And, he adds, "Everybody is interested in the best students."

As a graduate alumnus of economics told students at a recent Economics Department forum, "You have to have a heart to heart with yourself and decide where you want to teach, how you want to spend your time."

Stephen P. Neun, who received his PhD from UConn in 1988 and now is a professor of economics and dean of social science and management at Utica College, advised the students, "It's a question of placing yourself in a position to succeed."