Student Storyteller: Unconventional class
Marshall Shaffer, a first-year student from Houston, Texas, shares his thoughts on the behind-the-scenes look he and other students in Hana Brown’s “Political Sociology” class got at preparations for the upcoming Democratic National Convention.
Kevin Smith, a senior from Wilson, N.C., shares his experience with M4, a group that brings together male African-American students to talk about contemporary issues.
“You have to be a true visionary. It’s something that has to come from within,” said Deepa Pakianathan (MA '90, PhD '93), the 2012 recipient of the Excellence in Entrepreneurship award given at the Center for Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship annual awards banquet.
On most Saturday mornings, the pool in Reynolds Gym is filled with just a few people swimming laps. But on April 28, it was filled with underwater robots built by students at Hanes Magnet School, thanks to a partnership with Wake Forest’s Society of Physics Students.
Grace Wandell first dreamed of becoming an international representative when she was 7 years old. Her aspiration has come true. As a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, she will head to Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, this fall to earn a Masters Degree in Global Health.
Senior chemistry major Tara Seymour (’12) has been dancing since she was 4. She never imagined she would be dancing out the process of DNA replication until the opportunity arose to participate in Movement and the Molecular, the first class where chemistry meets dance taught at Wake Forest.
Yasmin Bendaas, an anthropology major with a double minor in journalism and Middle East and South Asia studies from Winston-Salem, N.C., will use video to help her research the facial tattoos of elderly women of the Chaouia, an indigenous group and tell their stories -- an interest sparked by three family visits to Algeria during her childhood.
When Mike Bevan’s father died suddenly last year, he dutifully stepped into a family leadership role. He also enrolled in “Fathers and Daughters,” the only known college class in the country devoted exclusively to dad-daughter relationships, to help his sister cope with their loss.