United Academics Announces Brace Award Winners for 2006-2007
United Academics (AAUP/AFT), the faculty union at the University of Vermont, has awarded the fourth annual scholarship for students at UVM in honor of an early 19th-century Black Vermonter, Jeffrey Brace. Each year the United Academics Jeffrey Brace Book Award provides $500 awards to be used for books and supplies by students who exemplify not only academic excellence but also an active commitment to achieving social justice. The United Academics Jeffrey Brace Book Award for 2006-2007 goes to four exceptional students: Margaret Hodder, a junior Social Work major from Wolfeboro, New Hampshire; Megan Johnson, a first-year student in the College of Arts and Sciences from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; Carolyn Smalkowski, a sophomore Environmental Studies major from Huntington, New York; and Michelle Torrey, a junior Social Work major from Colchester, Vermont.
"This year we had more applicants than ever before, and they really were an exceptional group," notes Prof. Stephanie Kaza, chair of the scholarship committee for United Academics. "We're pleased not only that more students are aware of the award, but that the UVM student body is becoming more actively involved in working for social and economic justice."
Jeffrey Brace was born Boyrereau Brinch in West Africa. In 1758, he was captured by slave traders and eventually sold as a slave in Connecticut. Brace enlisted in the Revolutionary Army in 1777 and fought for American liberty for five years before being honorably discharged and, only then, manumitted. Following the war, like many veterans, Brace and his wife moved to the new State of Vermont to take up farming. Virulent racism drove him and his family from their first homestead in Poultney to St. Albans where Brace established a new farm. Brace's struggles for personal and social justice are detailed in one of the earliest biographies of a Black American still in existence. The Special Collections of the University of Vermont contains one of the few copies of this important and rare book, The Blind African Slave. Jeffrey Brace did not seek out struggles for social justice but neither did he fear them. Although stolen from Africa, he fought for national independence. Although a veteran, a farmer, and a Vermonter, Brace had to continually fight for his rights as a citizen in the country he had helped create. He fought this fight in words, using the courts and the press. It is in memory of this important early Vermonter that United Academics seeks to facilitate the pursuit of academic excellence and social justice by the students of the University of Vermont which is exemplified by Hodder, Johnson, Smalkowski, and Torrey.
Margaret Hodder is carrying on a family tradition of commitment to global social justice. She works locally with children at Wheeler Elementary school and through the VIA program at the Lund Family Center in Burlington. She extended her reach this semester by traveling with Alternative Spring Break to Honduras to help landscape a schoolyard there. Hodder is especially interested in services for children and youth struggling in poverty. She hopes to continue this work in the future through the Department of Children and Families in Vermont.
Megan Johnson has been actively involved with raising campus awareness about justice on many levels through her work with Students for Peace and Global Justice. She helped organize the Oxfam Hunger Banquet to raise hunger awareness. She says, "My past pursuits have taught me so much about social issues and what it takes to accomplish social justice; the most important thing among those lessons is to pay attention, because I still have a long way to go." Traveling to Oaxaca, Mexico with Alternative Spring Break and attending The Next Step Retreat at UVM have helped her further tune in to social justice issues. Johnson is completing her first year at UVM and is considering a major in Anthropology. She hopes to study human development and Latin America and to deepen her involvement in ALANA, gender, and identity issues.
Carolyn Smalkowski recognizes that achieving social justice means attending to issues across a broad spectrum. She has been involved in local and global initiatives and has a particular interest in linking the work for social justice for impoverished people around the globe with her concern for environmental studies and animal protection. She has given a presentation on World AIDS Day and been involved with Batey Libertad Coalition in the Dominican Republic, as well as with local groups like Students for True Animal Rights, Green Mountain Animal Defenders, the Pets Helping People Program, and the Vermont Student Environmental Program.
Michelle Torrey got a first hand sense of the frustrations of the struggle for social justice when she was working at COTS (Committee on Temporary Shelter) and Section 8 funding was cut in the Vermont state budget. Torrey says, "My concern about those cuts left me feeling helpless and frustrated. It was so easy to see how this was going to affect many of the COTS clients who were having difficulty finding adequate, affordable housing before the budget cuts, but it wasn't so easy to see what I could do about it..." At the request of COTS and as part of a class project, she worked collaboratively with other students to pull together an information package on national trends relating to housing, homelessness, and poverty. Trips to the Statehouse helped her appreciate the power of people to voice concerns and "to give voice to the concerns of those who are often unheard." The experiences left her feeling optimistic. "I feel empowered and more confident in my ability to enact change on that mysterious 'macro' level that we're always hearing about," she says. She is currently working on a policy project that has her researching and presenting on the Death with Dignity legislation in Vermont.
All four Brace Award winners demonstrate an awareness of the power and privilege of education and have already made strides to use this power to fight the issues of social justice for which Vermonter Jeffrey Brace -- former slave, Revolutionary War Veteran, farmer, and memoirist -- fought.
Click here to return to UA's main Brace Awards page.
Last updated March 25, 2008