Alena Coleman wins Fulbright Scholarship to Uruguay
It is with great pleasure that as Alena Coleman’s Senior thesis co-advisor with Mark Sanders I would like to announce that she is the recipient of the Fulbright scholarship to Uruguay where she will be teaching during the 2023 school year. I met Alena in the fall of her freshman year and ever since I have been her mentor and advisor in many projects. Very few times as a professor we met an exceptional student, Alena is that student. She is a very talented and productive student and is well deserving of this honor. Alena’s thesis is titled: ‘A Woman is Everything a Man Need’: African Religious Ritual and Gender in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Alena is a Spanish and English major and an ESS minor. As her senior thesis co-director we have met every other week for the past 3 years. In her thesis she explores “the intersection of rituality, realism, and androcentrism in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”. She also analyzes the three years so far of the South Bend Civic Theatre’s ten year project as an “art intervention in education”. Under the educational component she worked with me and area school teachers on a pedagogical project editing lesson plans for high school curriculum to teach about August Wilson and the African American experiences during the 20th century. The result was a lesson plan packet with 145 pages of resources for teachers to use. In the spring of 2020, she presented at the HERA conference in Chicago. The title of her presentation was Performing Pedagogy: Teaching August Wilson in the Secondary Classroom. She is the recipient of the Mara Fox Spanish Service Award and the IN-AATSP student Spanish Award.
Alena has the drive, sharp mind, initiative, curiosity, motivation, dedication, and strong commitment to reach her goals. These are excellent qualities that will help her achieve great academic and professional success.
Written by: Tatiana Botero