The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey), May 11, 2008, Sunday
All Rights Reserved
The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey)
May 11, 2008, Sunday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEW JERSEY; Pg. 15
BYLINE: BOB BRAUN, STAR-LEDGER STAFF
BODY:
He has traveled the world to study and, in the end, brought home what he learned to help those who traveled from far away to come to his own hometown.
Utpal Sandesara, who will graduate from Harvard next month, has researched a variety of topics dealing with health and culture in India and Ecuador but, for his senior thesis, wrote about "suffering and injury" among Latino day laborers who live and work in Monmouth County, including his own town of Freehold.
"How people experience medical problems - especially work-related injury - is determined by what position they hold in a social hierarchy," says Sandesara, 21.
The young man, an Indian-American who has studied caste issues in South Asia, says undocumented Mexican workers in towns like Freehold and Red Bank fall into castes - and their position in that hierarchy determines their access to medical care and the benefits they receive (or don't) when they are injured.
"These workers are isolated and have little access to the care they need," he says.
By learning about these laborers and their problems, Sandesara says, he also had learned about himself, and how he wants to spend his future:
"It's affirmed my belief that I want to be both a physician and an anthropologist."
Sandesara is a Star-Ledger Scholar, one of 48 college students from New Jersey who are assisted financially every year by Donald Newhouse, the president of the newspaper, through a program established 21 years ago.
Each year, 12 high school seniors are selected to receive financial assistance based strictly on academic merit. Most will receive $12,000, four-year stipends; one is designated the Mort Pye Scholar and receives a full four-year tuition scholarship.
Sandesara, a graduate of Manalapan High School, was the Mort Pye Scholar for 2004. The award was named for the longtime editor of the newspaper who designed the program in 1987. Pye, who led the newspaper for more than 30 years, died in 1997.
The names of the 2008 award winners will be disclosed in next week's edition of the Sunday Star-Ledger.
The Star-Ledger Scholars have used the scholarships to attend the most competitive colleges and universities in the nation, including the Ivy League schools, service academies and other selective schools such as Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cal Tech, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Duke and Swarthmore.
Nearly 200 graduates have gone on after graduation to careers in medicine, law, academics, engineering and business.
Other 2008 graduates, such as Sandesara, combine the pursuit of learning with love of travel. Lee-Shing Chang of Middletown, for example, traveled to Uganda to review medical facilities in that African nation. He, too, plans to attend medical school after he graduates from Yale.
"What I saw in Uganda has made me seriously consider practicing medicine in a place like Africa," Chang says.
Vivien Sun of Parsippany, about to earn her undergraduate degree from Harvard, will travel to Cambridge University in England to earn a graduate degree in public health and then return to medical school in the United States.
Three graduates will teach in Asia. Rebekah Porter of Pittstown has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach English in Taiwan. The linguistics major will graduate from the University of Rochester this year; her brother Joshua also was a Star-Ledger Scholar.
Jessica Marsden of Millburn, who hopes to pursue a career in journalism, will first teach English in China for two years after her Yale graduation. Rebecca Black of North Brunswick, about to earn a degree from Swarthmore, plans to teach English in Japan for a year before enrolling at Columbia for graduate school.
Matthew Buckner of Blairstown expects to earn a graduate degree in astrophysics at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill after he graduates from Lehigh University. Jill Kropa of Cranford, about to graduate from Villanova, plans to attend medical school in the fall.
Three graduates will begin careers after commencement. Alexander Thomson of Hamburg, who will earn a degree from Clemson in financial management, will begin work at Maersk Inc. Deborah Kotei of East Orange, about to receive a degree in industrial and labor relations from Cornell, has been hired by Hannaford Inc.
Alexandra Denby of Berkeley Heights, who will earn both a bachelor's degree in biology and a master's degree in computer science, from Cornell, will begin working as a software engineer for Applied Predictive Technologies.
The 2005 Mort Pye Scholar, Norman Yao of Basking Ridge, is pursuing research on the physics of how organic filaments, such as those found in brain matter, clump together.
"It has implications for the study of Alzheimer's disease," says Yao, a Harvard junior.
Ethan Groveman of Millburn, now a sophomore at Stanford, is studying the neurology of pain. He also has been working for a new startup company in Palo Alto, Project Better Place, which is seeking to make electric cars more widely available. "I became interested in working at the company because I believe that our reliance upon oil is one of the greatest issues we face as a society today, both from the environmental perspective, and also because many of the countries that supply oil are not exactly exemplars of human rights and democracy," says Groveman, the 2006 Mort Pye Scholar.
Last year's Mort Pye Scholar, Jerry Kung of East Brunswick, is completing his first year at Harvard. He plans to study Chinese this summer at the National Taiwan University.
Star-Ledger Scholars traveled widely for more than just study. Deirdre Shannon, a Princeton sophomore from Berkeley Heights, worked with victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Michael Hurley of Marlboro, a second-year student at MIT, helped teach Ethiopian students how to use computers to start up businesses.
Catherine Hartmann of Oldwick, a first-year student at the University of Virginia, traveled to Belize to work in a school and orphanage. And Robert Carroll, a Notre Dame junior, volunteered in Appalachia.
Bob Braun, a Star-Ledger columnist, directs The Star-Ledger Scholars program. He may be reached at (973) 392-4281 or at rbraun@starledger.com
<< Home