February 2005 Stories

Michelle Gregoire: Politics Inspires Washington’s First Daughter

After a bruising and hotly contested gubernatorial race, Michelle Gregoire’s ’07 mother, Christine, won the Washington governor’s race by a slim 129-vote margin. It’s taught the environmental science major that voting is an incredibly precious gift.

“The campaign was one long roller-coaster ride,” says Gregoire, a sophomore who is studying the political and economic aspects of environmental policy. She spent the summer with other college students working as an intern on her mother’s campaign. “This was by far and away the best summer of my life. I loved the excitement and the 24/7 energy of the campaign. I got to speak to different groups at retirement homes and at legislative district meetings. I stuffed envelopes, wrote letters and helped organize a grassroots effort called the Friends of Gregoire. Sometimes I drove my mom to different events in the “campaign mobile.” Members of the campaign and our whole family also toured the state in an RV. It was really fun and exciting.”

The Gregoire family’s political life began when Christine Gregoire, who was head of Washington’s Office of Ecology, ran for the office of state attorney general. Michelle Gregoire was only 7 years old and she recalls the family sitting around the kitchen table discussing the prospect of a political future. “My mom was against running at first because we’re a really close family and she was worried that running for political office might come between us. My older sister [Courtney Gregoire ’01] said, ‘You’ve always told us we could be anything we wanted to be. If that’s true, you can be attorney general. Being a mom shouldn’t stop you.’”

Christine Gregoire was elected attorney general in 1992 and reelected in 1996. As attorney general, she became an even better role model for her daughters. “Her political role has brought out so many more aspects of her that I respect. She was inspired into public service by President John Kennedy saying, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’ She’s instilled the principle of public service in my sister and me. Even my friends are inspired by her.”

What Christine Gregorie’s political career didn’t do was change the Gregoire family’s close ties. In fact, when she decided to run for governor, study groups revealed that most of the public wasn’t even aware that she had a husband and family. “My mom tried to protect me and my sister from the spotlight. I never had to sacrifice anything because of my mom’s political career and it’s never interfered with our family’s closeness. In fact, it’s taught me that women can have close family connections and still have a strong role in public service.”

During the Washington race for governor, the political rhetoric heated up and Gregoire’s Republican political opponents said some pretty harsh things. “Washington was a swing state and the Republican National Committee pumped an amazing amount of money into the race. They really wanted to win. But it was hard hearing the criticisms about my mother. I take everything they say personally. I know she was running for governor, but at the end of the day, she’s my mom.”

The campaign is finally over, the Washington legislature has certified the election and Gregoire has been sworn in as governor. A few Republicans are still challenging the validity of the race, but few believe their efforts will be effective. Michelle Gregoire says the prospect of being the First Daughter is a bit daunting. “The whole process has been a little overwhelming. Getting used to being protected all the time by security will take some getting used to.”

The experience, she says, has convinced her that politics and public service will always be a part of her life. She has her immediate sights on becoming an environmental attorney. “I’ve learned that you can personally make a difference. By being involved, you can have a say in your government. My mom winning by 129 votes out of more than 2 million illustrates how important your vote is. Voting is the power of the people and I hope all citizens get that message.”

Paul Swenson: Taking Flight.

The Big Brown Bat in Paul Swenson’s hand is tiny – four inches long and weighing about a half an ounce. Its folded wings poke out like miniature stilts around its black, cone-shaped ears and furry face. Swenson positions a small, metal band on the animal’s forearm and the bat clamps down, biting Swenson’s finger hard enough to make the Willamette University senior grimace in pain.

Swenson, a biology major who is also a Morton E. and Jessie G. Peck Scholarship recipient, remains calm and blows gently on the bat. It’s usually a sure-fire stop-bite trick, but it doesn’t faze this creature. The bat’s shiny black eyes peer unblinking at Swenson.

The young researcher is in North Carolina’s Nantahala National Forest in the Appalachian Mountains studying how logging impacts bats. He blows on the bat again, ruffing the dun-colored fur. The animal doesn’t move. Swenson gently shakes his finger. He resists the temptation to pull the bat off, which could injure it. Finally, after several long minutes, the bat simply releases his bite. Swenson holds up his bleeding finger. “That’ll leave a scar,” he says.

During his two-month research stint, Swenson has been bitten dozens of times. It’s a small price to pay, he says, to be able to study flight. “I’ve always wanted to fly,” he says. “When I was young, I wanted to be a pilot.” A study-abroad trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands in his sophomore year and one last year to Hawaii kindled his interest in flying animals.

He stands up and stretches wearily. His finger throbs slightly. This is the tenth bat he’s banded out of the 15 he has caught tonight. Several nights this week, he and other researchers have stretched netting across forested bat corridors hoping to harmlessly capture the animals in the fine mesh. They then band the bats and outfit some of them with radio telemetry tags so they can track the animals’ movements. “During the day, we try to find out where they’re roosting so we know what part of the forest they’re using,” Swenson explains.

Other nights, he uses recording devices called AnaBats. “These record the bat calls so we can analyze what kind of bats are making the calls,” he says. “If we record for a number of nights, it also tells us about their relative activity. You can’t tell exactly how many bats there are, since the calls may come from one bat or from 200 bats, but it gives us an idea of the bat activity in certain areas.”

The bats are active only at night. However, the researchers also need to track them and conduct vegetation surveys during the day. It makes for a grueling schedule. Swenson is paid for 40 hours a week, but he often works 80. “It’s very common for us to start vegetation surveys and put out recording devices at 10 a.m., come back for dinner, and go back out until 3 a.m. It’s a lot of work.”

The next morning, after just a few hours sleep, Swenson tromps through the forest, marking off the study areas. He will study bat activity in four types of clear cuts: a control area with no cutting; an area with a 30-foot buffer between the stream and the clear cut; one with a 100-foot buffer; and one with no stream buffer at all. “The cuts will happen next year,” Swenson explains, pulling the measuring tape through the brush. “There will be two summers of pre-treatment data followed by a year of post-treatment activity to see if there’s a change in the overall activity of the bats around these headwater streams.”

The work is important because bats, who are voracious insect eaters, are imperiled due to habitat destruction, disturbance of their colonies and widespread use of pesticides on insects. “All the bats in this forest are insectivores and they control a lot of insects like moths and mosquitoes that would not otherwise be controlled,” he says. “Some moth species are especially good at camouflage during the day. At night, it’s a different story and the bats help control them. Unfortunately, a number of bat species are endangered.”

One of the most surprising things Swenson found out about bats was their individualized behavior and temperament, even within the same species. “Some bats are quite docile and will just lie on your hand, even if you aren’t holding onto the tail,” he says. “Others are very aggressive and bite continuously. Still others bite only when you manipulate them like when you extend the wing to measure it. Some will scream like the dickens. Others don’t make a sound. Each one is really unique, with individual personalities.”

Swenson wipes his brow. The day is heating up and he still has a number of vegetation surveys to complete and several AnaBats to set before the day is done. “I didn’t expect to figure out what I wanted to study for the rest of my life,” he says wistfully. He plans to pursue movement ecology, the study of animal movements and their environments, which encompasses his interest in animals, ecology and flight.

“This experience has helped me realize that I’ve stepped beyond just taking information and putting it down on a test,” he says. “Now I can take in concepts and use those concepts to construct an idea to try to explain something.”

This year, Swenson’s Peck scholarship will free him to focus more on his studies. It will also enable him to take the next step and conduct some original research, including some avian research he’s proposing. “There’s a red honeycreeper called the Iiwi in Hawaii that we don’t know enough about,” he says, his dark eyes shining with excitement. “After breeding season, the bird takes off, but no one knows where it disperses. If we knew, we could implement certain management techniques to help the population that’s decreasing.”

He gazes across the undulating landscape of the Appalachias. “This year, I don’t have to worry about making enough money to pay for school and it’s my scholarship that’s made the difference,” he says. “I can concentrate on my senior thesis and my own research. It will let me apply my own ideas and knowledge to the real world.”

Swenson has found his own wings.

Amber Simonton: Journey to Herself.

Amber Simonton carefully splits the narrow green chili down the center. She gently scrapes out the seeds and dices the chili into fine pieces. The chili’s juice makes her eyes water and her hands tingle. She’s making homemade salsa, something she’s never done before.

Simonton, a Willamette transfer honors scholarship recipient, grew up torn between two worlds – Caucasian and Latino. The senior sociology major is the daughter of Diane Simonton, a Caucasian, and Oscar Serrano, a Latino born in El Salvador. She grew up in Lynnwood, Wash., a primarily white and relatively affluent suburb of Seattle.

“Lynnwood doesn’t really have a Latino community,” she says, scraping the chilies into a bowl. “There’s one Mexican restaurant that sells tacos and a little store that sells Mexican CDs and stuff, but that’s it. My dad didn’t teach me Spanish or talk much about growing up in El Salvador. I had little connection to my Latino heritage.”

On this Saturday, she’s gathered with 10 Willamette students at the home of admissions counselor, Ramiro Flores, to learn how to make tamales for a University cultural event. “We grew up eating this food, but none of us know how to make it,” she says. She opens a package of dried corn husks and begins separating them. “We tried to make papusas, a traditional food from El Salvador, but they were raw in the middle. When we made enchiladas, we set off the smoke alarm three times.”

She places the corn husks in the steamer to soften them. Other students are melting manteca (lard) to mix into masa, the cornmeal that will wrap the tamales. Latino ranchera music pulses from a CD player in the next room. Several of the girls sway to the music. The air is thick with the of smell of garlic, cumin, chili and pork.

“A lot of immigrants experience discrimination,” says Simonton. “They push their cultural heritage into the background because they think their kids will have an easier time growing up. That’s especially true for kids like me who come from a mixed background.”

Most of the students making tamales today are Latino. Simonton’s fair complexion and blue eyes stand out. “Most people perceive me as white, especially when I’m with a predominantly white group.”

Growing up passing for Caucasian didn’t make her feel more like her white, affluent classmates. “We were poor compared to most of my peers at school. My dad owned a little restaurant on Highway 99 that sold hamburgers, French fries, sodas and milkshakes. My mom worked as a housekeeper in a nursing home.”

When Simonton’s parents separated, her Latino cultural heritage slipped even further away. She knew something was missing and her discontent showed. “I was just a frustrated, angry teenager. I couldn’t relate to school. I was lost.”

A trip to Mexico with her dad when she was a high school sophomore began to open the door to her true identity. “Mexico felt like a homecoming to me,” she says. “I’d never been there before, but I felt connected to the people and to the culture. I realized this was the part of me that I’d been missing.”

The students measure out several cups of yellow corn masa into a large blue tub and add melted lard and warm pork broth. Simonton plunges her hands into the cornmeal, her fingers mixing the wet and dry ingredients. The gritty mixture makes her hands, already inflamed from the chilis, burn even more.

When Simonton returned from the trip to Mexico with her dad, she was energized. “In my senior year, I said, ‘I want to do something with my life. I still have a chance.’ But my high school counselor wouldn’t help me apply for college or for financial aid. He made me feel like I shouldn’t even try.”

Despite the lack of help, Simonton enrolled at Seattle Central, a community college with a large, diverse student population. For the first time, she found herself surrounded by students of color. “I interacted with other Latino students and realized that I share a rich heritage with them.”

She joined the student Latino organization, M.E.Ch.A, and worked on the College Activities Board to bring Latino-oriented activities to campus. “I was able to combine my newly found interest in my heritage and my interest in social justice issues with everything I was learning in my classes. It was really exciting for me.”

With the preparation work for the tamales done, the students form an assembly line around the dining room table. In the center of the table is a stack of softened cornhusks, the tub of masa dough, bowls of green and red salsa, shredded pork and crumbly Mexican cojita cheese. One student separates the softened cornhusks. Another rolls balls of masa and flattens them with a metal tortilla press. Still another spreads the dough onto the husks. The package is passed to the next student where a tablespoon each of pork and salsa are placed onto the center of the masa. Finally, each tamale is gently folded and stacked into steamers to be cooked.

Despite her alliance with Latino students, Simonton knows she’s different. “I’ve had to mitigate belonging to two different groups my whole life. When I’m with a group of Latino friends, I’m not brown enough. When I’m with a group of white people, I’m not white enough. When you’re of mixed heritage, people treat you differently. They ask ridiculous questions. They make assumptions about you and your family.”

She began to embrace her difference at a conference and later during a summer internship with Mavin Foundation, a national nonprofit that advocates for multi-racial, multi-ethnic people. “I realized there are all these other people who have the same experience as me. Just like me, they’re always being told that they don’t completely belong.”

It’s dark now. They’ve been here for six hours and Simonton feels weary. They still have 100 more tamales to make before they leave.

“Coming to Willamette has made everything come together for me – my cultural history, my interest in activism and social justice, my interest in sociology and my unique identity,” she says, gazing at the sliding glass doors that are steamy from bubbling pots on the stove. “My scholarships have made it possible for me to be here. Before I came to Willamette, I had this fragmented identity. Now, I’m a whole person and I’m part of many different tight-knit circles here. Having these two different heritages makes me richer, you know?”

Rebecca Farrin: Finding Her Path.

The sun feels hot as the battered bus bounces along a dusty road on the outskirts of Oaxaca. Rebecca Farrin ’05 lurches against the hard bench seat as the bus hits a pothole. In front of her sits a dark-skinned man in a sweat-stained straw hat. His hands are thick and calloused. Across the aisle, an old woman with a deeply lined face and straight, salt and pepper hair pulled into braid that’s woven with a bright red ribbon, clutches a shopping bag to her ample bosom. Under her seat, two skinny chickens huddle in a cage made of thin sticks. Next to her sits a young mother, discretely nursing a baby. No, this isn’t the tourist version of Oaxaca; it’s the real Mexico that Willamette University student Farrin is living day after day.

Farrin, a Gilman Scholarship recipient, is on her way to Desarrollo Integral de la Juventud Oaxaquena (Integral Development of Oaxacan Youth), a nonprofit organization that works with at-risk and poverty-stricken youth in the small communities outside the city of Oaxaca, one of the poorest areas in southern Mexico. Her $5,000 scholarship paid for her to come to the University of Oaxaca where she’s studying literature, anthropology and pre-Hispanic Mexican history, which is taught entirely in Spanish. She’s also volunteering at the development center.

“I love kids,” she says softly. “In Salem, I work with kids in bi-lingual education at Bush Elementary. Since most of my kids are from Mexico, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to get to know their country.”

The bus pulls up in front of a bright turquoise store where they sell newspapers and magazines. Farrin grabs her backpack and disembarks. The air is tinged with the smell of fresh tortillas, truck diesel, and sewage from a nearby litter-strewn creek. “Tamales,” calls out a woman, who carries a cloth-covered basket propped on one hip. Farrin isn’t temped by those fragrant parcels. At the home of her host family earlier today, she ate a mid-day meal – carrot soup, chicken, vegetables, fruit, rice and beans, tortillas and rice pudding with cinnamon.

As she walks along the street, Farrin’s blond hair and freckled skin make her stand out in the sea of brown faces. “Oye, güera [white girl],” calls out a young man lounging against a tireless Chevy propped on blocks. Mexican music blares from a boombox at his feet. Nearby, his three friends snigger. Farrin looks straight ahead and quickens her pace slightly. She’s learned to ignore the unwanted male attention her pale skin attracts. After so many months, she’s almost become accustomed to Mexico’s macho attitudes toward women. Almost, but not quite. Sometimes, she raises her soft voice and talks back to them. Today, she just keeps walking.

She’s in the small community of Xoxo (pronounced ho ho), one of a number of towns surrounding the city. The unpaved streets are lined with tiny homes, some little more than collections of corrugated tin and mud bricks. Most of them have dirt floors, no electricity, no indoor plumbing. She passes an open door where a woman sweeps the dirt floor with a straw broom. The room is bare except for a small wooden table and two mismatched chairs. In the front yard, a thin dog that recently bore pups lies in the shade of a scruffy tree while three toddlers play on a pile of old tires. “Holá, Señora Vargas,” Farrin calls out.

The woman, the mother of one of the children Farrin works with at the center, looks up from her work and smiles shyly. “Buenas tardes.”

It’s taken time, but Farrin has been embraced by many of the families she’s worked with, unusual in such a close, family-oriented culture. “I’ve gotten to know many of my families,” she says. “I’ve built relationships with them. I’ve even been invited to their baptisms and other special events.”

At the development center, the children, who range in age from five to 13, smile when they see Farrin. One dark-haired youngster, a bare-footed girl no older than six who’s dressed in a tattered flowered dress, holds Farrin’s hand tightly. When Farrin first arrived, the children acted shy and withdrawn. Because she has freckled skin, they thought something was wrong with her. They asked if she had chicken pox. Now she’s their friend and teacher.

“My kids are the poorest of the poor,” she says, her brow furrowing. “They often don’t have enough to eat. They have to climb down a mountain to collect water in a stream. Then they have to climb back up with it just to have water to cook with.”

Today, she’s prepared a lesson to help them learn English, a key to improving their lives. Because their reading skills are poor, she’s forced to find creative ways to help them learn. Sometimes, a few parents or other adults who need English to sell their wares to tourists join the class.

Some days, Farrin works in a psycho-motor skills class where children participate in line- and swing dancing and other movement activities. “Kids who don’t have good motor skills can’t always complete tasks teachers require of them,” she explains. “I’m minoring in psychology, so I find that fascinating.”

In April, she helped several communities prepare for Diá de los Niños, a national day of recognition and celebration of children. “I went to different communities and helped them plan parties and prepare food,” she says. “We planned activities and played games. I got to do my favorite thing, which is work with kids.”

She looks around the brightly colored orange room that she recently spent hours repainting. “These kids have situational difficulties, which make it hard for them to learn,” she says. “My experience in Oaxaca has given me a chance to organize and direct my own classes and I’ve enjoyed it.”

When her travel abroad experience ends, it’ll be painful to leave her kids and her Mexican family. She plans to return next summer to visit her host family, her friends and her students. She’d like to volunteer again at the center. “I’ve grown really close to my host mom and my host sister,” she says. “And I love my kids.”

It’ll also be difficult to go home. Some people have clear-cut ideas about immigration and illegal aliens; ideas that have changed for Farrin since she came here. “I used to think it was pointless for people to cross the border illegally because they’re still disadvantaged when they come to the U.S.,” she explains. “In Mexico, the infrastructure is so poor and disorganized, it doesn’t reach down to the people who need it. Many in Mexico are so poor that their only goal is to come to the United States, even if they have to be illegal, to get some help. I have new respect for immigrants and the amount of sacrifice it takes to get to the U.S.”

When she graduates from Willamette this year, she’s going to pursue a degree in special education. “This experience has put me on a different track,” she says, smiling broadly. “Now, I’m interested in working with disadvantaged children and children with disabilities. I’ve found something I really love.”

Seeing Alli: Delta Gamma Membership Made the Difference.

At two-years-old, Alli Falleur was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, a medical condition that affects control of her muscles. She was the 1996 Easter Seal representative for the nation. The cute little girl was confined to a wheelchair, but her love for life and spunk were not restrained. Alli was determined to live life fully even when society put up barriers.

In high school, Alli was fully mainstreamed, but an attendant helped her take notes in class. It was awkward for Alli to make friends with an older attendant at her side all day. “My only two friends were also disabled,” she said. “I felt very isolated.”

Graduating with a 3.94 GPA, Alli looked toward college. Her sister was going to a large state university, but Alli decided to go to a smaller school where she could get more personalized attention. Willamette University in Salem, Oregon was a perfect choice. It had an excellent academic reputation and was an hour from home. She did not have a full-time attendant in college to assist her during the day; it was up to her to get to class and take notes. In the highly competitive college environment, Alli could have opted to take a less stressful path. But she didn’t and is quick to credit Willamette staff for their part in her successful completion of college.

“My professors were absolutely wonderful – all of them – as were the maintenance and facility people,” she said. “When I needed assistance or asked for help, they were there.”

Alli also decided that one of her goals for college was to break out and make friends. It was her biggest challenge, as it is for most disabled young people.

She was assigned to live in one of the oldest building on campus, but the hall’s basement was wheelchair accessible and had a few student rooms. Fortuitously, Alli’s freshman roommate was a social butterfly. “She brought that life to me,” Alli said. “We always had visitors, and I loved it.”

Alli also made efforts to seek out the other students housed in the basement rooms. One was Tracy McWhinney, a Delta Gamma who had what Alli describes as a “fireball personality.” Tracy convinced Alli that joining a sorority would be a good way to have a real social life in college. Tracy invited Alli to freshman open house (Willamette has deferred recruitment) to see what sorority houses were like. Alli liked what she saw: she wanted to join Beta Pi chapter and the members wanted Alli.

“I had a new social paradigm,” said Alli. “It was one of complete acceptance for who I was. There were no barriers because of my wheelchair. For the first time in my life, there was someone outside my family who saw me as a person who was valued for what I could contribute.”

“The girls didn’t see Alli’s wheelchair,” said Pam Armpriest Anunsen, Beta Pi house corporation president. “They saw Alli.”

Anunsen, Beta Upsilon-Oregon State, and the rest of the board immediately began efforts and committed funds to ensure that Alli could move into the house in fall 2001. The front and back door were equipped with an ADA-approved (Americans with Disabilities) door opener and ramps.

The large president’s room, one of six rooms on the main floor, was remodeled to accommodate Alli and future disabled members. They removed the day bed and a built-in dresser and desk. The university furnished an ADA-approved bed and adjustable desk. The house corporation bought new carpeting and painted the room. The total cost was $400.

The bathroom changes were more costly. The remodel of the hallway guest bathroom required Anunsen and the board to authorize the budget of $12,500.

“The outcome was great,” Anunsen said. “We not only had a bathroom to accommodate Alli, but our house is now accessible to guests with disabilities.”

Once Alli was initiated, chapter meetings were moved from the basement to the main floor, so Alli could participate. For off-site activities, members took turns driving Alli’s van, which could accommodate her wheelchair.

Alli enjoyed her Delta Gamma experience fully. She served two terms as director: alumnae relations. She was an “anchor sister” to several new members, became a big sister, participated in all Beta Pi activities and even went to a toga party.

“I was continually impressed with Alli and her enthusiasm for Delta Gamma,” said Julia Houha, one of Alli’s pledge sisters and 2003 chapter president. “She wanted to contribute as much as she could in everything from chapter meetings to activities.”

“I’m so thankful to Delta Gamma,” said Alli. “My parents always told me to never pity myself – just do it. Delta Gamma let me do it.”

This fall Alli completed her final credits to get her B.A. in both politics and Spanish, with a 3.72 GPA. She interns with the State of Oregon’s Affirmative Action Agency in the Governor’s Office, but plans to take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and enter law school. She now attends Salem alumnae chapter meetings.

This story was written by Ann Ericksen Grim and originally appeared in the Winter 2004 issue of The Anchora of Delta Gamma.

Kirsten Wesselhoeft: Creating Community with Art.

Can art create community? Lilly Grant recipient and philosophy major Kirsten Wesselhoeft ’06 thinks so. In fact, she believes people creating art together can be one of the most powerful ways to connect people.

“Last spring, I started an after-school program at Richmond Elementary School here in Salem with a fellow student where we involved kids in the process of designing a mural about their school,” she explained. “The larger-than-life mural was a huge success. Even more important was the interpersonal connection the kids made with one another as they worked together on the art project.”

Wesselhoeft, who has painted for most of her life and has taught art in a variety of venues, was intrigued by what she observed at Richmond. She designed a Lilly project to examine the spiritual value of art. Could creating art offer intangible spiritual values like connection and community that other forms of service like food and shelter could not? With the $3,000 Lilly Grant stipend, Wesselhoeft profiled six organizations that use art as a form of community service.

“I wanted to examine the nexus of community arts and community service. I wanted to see how artists and fine arts organizations are coming together with social workers and community service organizations to serve people. Some of the organizations I worked directly with; others I simply researched.”

One of the things she found was that the delivery of service to people in need was greatly enhanced when the organizations involved their clients in arts projects. “The connection people make when they work together creating art is incredible. The act of creating is most effective when it’s in community. When you’re working on a creative project together, the interpersonal connection people make with one another is amazing. People not only connect with one another in making the art, they connect with the audience who sees the art. It’s like ripples in a pond that creates this great sense of community.”

One of the projects where Wesselhoeft found the powerful community building effect of creating art was in Englewood, Colo., where the Outdoor Arts Museum was charged with rehabilitating a run down neighborhood. “This program combines education, service and art with urban development. The museum moved into a bad part of town. Their contract with the city was to fill the space with art, with the idea that not only the presence of art, but also the presence of artists and students making art would have an impact. Other businesses came in, including a library and a dance studio. It sparked a sense of community and transformed the neighborhood into a place where people wanted to be.”

Another project Wesselhoeft profiled was Willamette University’s Willamette Academy, a mentoring program designed to help underserved youth prepare for college. Local professional photographer Jill Cannefax has the students take photographs of one another as a means of creating community and encouraging nonviolent communication. “You can’t take a photograph of someone without really seeing that person, without seeing who they are. That connection, in turn, counteracts a lot of the violence these kids might do to one another.”

Wesselhoeft, who has written a guidebook for service and arts organizations interested in using art as community service, came to the conclusion that art is one of the most effective ways to help people and to strengthen communities. “Interaction with other people informs our art in the most incredible way and makes our art more relevant. That interpersonal communication, whether through seeing art or creating art, is one of the most powerful experiences a person can have.”

She says she was surprised by how her liberal arts education supported the work. “This project pulled together so many of my interests. I used things I’d learned in philosophy and sociology and ended up weaving together things that are important to me.”

Perhaps the most valuable thing Wesselhoeft took away from her Lilly project was clarity about her own values and life direction. “This taught me that service is my vocation. Working with art and community service brings me great fulfillment. It’s also something I’m good at. I learned that I can use my art to serve others. That’s really important.”