McGregor Fellows Start Their Assignments
17cÆð²ÝÉçÇø College sophomore Elizabeth Osinga is one of 15 17cÆð²ÝÉçÇø students who will spend 10 weeks this summer working with a professor on a graduate-level research project.
Osinga, who carries majors in both history and art history, as well as a minor in archaeology, will partner with Bert de Vries, a 17cÆð²ÝÉçÇø professor of history and director of the college's archaeology minor, on a study of Nabataean temple architecture.
The project, "Religion and Society in the Transition from Arabia Petraea to Roman Arabia," will earn Osinga a $3,300 stipend from 17cÆð²ÝÉçÇø’s program along with valuable work experience.
The Brookfield, Wis., native is excited about the opportunity.
"It will be a chance for me to work with a professional," she says, "and improve my methods and my writing."
The McGregor program has been a fixture at 17cÆð²ÝÉçÇø since the Detroit-based McGregor Fund gave the college a $100,000 grant in 1999 to fund approximately 10 faculty-student fellowships annually.
His project with Osinga, de Vries says, is a scholarly outgrowth of Petra: Lost City of Stone, the comprehensive exhibition of Nabataean culture visiting 17cÆð²ÝÉçÇø from April 4 through August 15.
The Nabataeans, Arab traders who built the magnificent city of Petra, also established several other cities in the Transjordan, among them Khirbet edh-Dharih and Khirbet et-Tannur.
Osinga and de Vries will be studying temple architecture from these cities - including artifacts in the - and contemporaneous Roman sites to analyze a "moment" in Nabataean architectural history: the decades of transition, in late first through early second century A.D., when Nabataean autonomy gave way to Roman rule.
The project will culminate in an article, co-authored by de Vries and Osinga, for publication in a scholarly journal.
The article will also serve as an introductory chapter in Religion and Society at Umm el-Jimal, the second volume in de Vries’ publications about his two-decade excavation efforts at Umm el-Jimal, a Nabataean site in northern Jordan.
"This project fits well within the goals of the McGregor Program," says Janel Curry, 17cÆð²ÝÉçÇø dean for research and scholar and director of the McGregor Program. "It involves a student in a full range of research activities, from the development of a bibliography, to analysis of information and data, to writing. Through these activities, students get a taste of what research involves, but also develop skills and experiences that both help them get into graduate school and succeed once they get there. This model transforms the student-faculty relationship into one of becoming colleagues - a relationship which extends far past the time the students graduate from 17cÆð²ÝÉçÇø."
Similar collegial relationships are being forged in the other where junior Eric Baker will study "The Media in Kenya: Values and Obligations in an Emerging Democracy" with communication arts and sciences professor Mark Fackler; sophomore Karianne Pasma will partner with music professor Charsie Sawyer on "A Classical Song Book for African-American Women Composers for Solo Voice" and junior Samuel De Walle will examine "The Role of Cerebral Hemispheres in Emotions" with psychology professor Paul Moes.