UD alumnus Dave Plastino (center, back) with the 2015 Plastino Scholars, Lael Houston, Georgina Class-Peters, Austin Roadarmel, Sophiana Leto, Gerti Wilson, Sean Krazit, Dunia Tonob and Kevin Mascitelli.

2015 Plastino Scholars

Annual dinner recognizes last year's Plastino Scholars, welcomes 2015 cohort

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1:48 p.m., May 20, 2015--The five University of Delaware undergraduates who traveled the world to pursue their passions as 2014 Plastino Scholars recounted their experiences earlier this month at an annual celebration dinner that also welcomed the incoming 2015 cohort.

Their achievements were celebrated by proud family members, faculty mentors and the program’s benefactor, alumnus Dave Plastino.

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Warren Award

Rosalind Johnson, assistant dean for student success in the NUCLEUS Program in UD's College of Arts and Sciences, was presented the John Warren Excellence in Leadership and Service Award during a May 26 ceremony.

Established in 2007 by a generous gift from Plastino, a 1978 graduate of UD’s College of Arts and Sciences, the Plastino Scholars Program awards grants to undergraduates to support self-designated, off-campus projects of their passion.

These awards give students a chance to discover and follow their interests, Plastino has said. “It takes a self-motivated individual, but any undergraduate at UD has the opportunity to become a Plastino Scholar,” he added.

As a 2014 Plastino Scholar, senior Jocelyn Moore volunteered at three different anti-trafficking organizations last summer. Her experience took her to New York City, Chicago and Capitol Hill, where she learned the importance of words and communities in creating safe havens for survivors.

“I cannot (and would dare not) tell a survivor that I can completely relate to what she has been through,” said Moore. “However, I do have an unquenchable passion for justice. And now, thanks to this Plastino Scholars opportunity, I have a wealth of other types of experience from which I can draw in order to supplement, and even validate, this passion. I am beyond grateful for this privilege of research.”

2015 Plastino Scholars

  • Georgina Class-Peters and Gerti Wilson, will work together to produce a documentary titled The Beauty Project: Ghana, examining the perceptions of beauty and the effect they have on young women in power. Class-Peters is a junior political science major from Delaware, and she is also the student representative on the selection committee for UD’s next president. Wilson is a junior political science major with minors in legal studies and women’s studies from Delaware. 
  • Lael Houston, a public policy major from Delaware, will use her Plastino experience to study health care disparities in the aboriginal Australian population, with a special focus on those in remote areas. She is interested in understanding the social factors that influence health and exacerbate disparity. 
  • As Plastino Scholars, Sean Krazit and Kevin Mascitelli will combine their love of dance and interest in education to better understand how to start and run a successful swing dance organization — taking what they learn from successful operations in Austin, Seattle and Denver and applying it to UD’s swing dance club, as well as other swing dance organizations in the area. Krazit, a senior English education major from New Jersey, and Mascitelli, an international relations major from Pennsylvania, are members of UD’s Swing Dance Club. 
  • Sophiana Leto, a junior anthropology major with minors in art history, Latin American studies and material culture studies, will travel across the country — to New York, Illinois, Arizona and California — to study how museums implement successful outreach programs for their communities. She is particularly interested in determining whether museums are able to provide their residents something that other social service providers cannot.
  • Austin Roadarmel, a sophomore biological sciences major from Delaware, will use his Plastino experience to conduct a global health care study, interviewing physicians across the world. As a pre-med student and health policy enthusiast, he is interested in investigating the effects of the Affordable Care Act. Roadarmel wants to study other countries to ensure he can play a role in enhancing the American health care system.
  • Dunia Tonob, a junior anthropology major from Delaware with minors in Asian studies, biological sciences and medical humanities, will also explore health care systems, shadowing doctors and patients in America and China to better understand differences in doctor-patient relationships and patient satisfaction. She, too, is interested in the effects of the Affordable Care Act, and as an anthropology and medical humanities student, she wants to learn about culture to better impact the lives of others.

Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson

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