Flinn Scholars

Each August, the Flinn Scholars annual retreat serves as a chance for incoming Scholars to spend their first extended time together and begin establishing the bonds that will unite them well beyond their graduations four years in the future. The retreat is also an occasion for Scholars further along in their undergraduate careers to reconnect after a summer--or a semester, or even a full year--spent in far-flung settings for travel, study, and research. In these narratives, a returning Flinn Scholar, Emma Kleiner ('09), and a first-year Scholar, Savannah Martin ('10), describe their experiences at the 2010 retreat, held last month.

Flinn Scholars

In 1985, the Flinn Foundation made a grant to Arizona State University establishing an endowment in honor of the the university's 100th anniversary. The endowment gave birth to the Centennial Lecture, one of the premier annual cultural events at ASU.

A great perk for Flinn Scholars: because of the lecture's tie to the Foundation, each Centennial Lecturer's weeklong stay at ASU includes a session with current Flinn Scholars (from any of Arizona's universities).

During my own undergraduate experience as a Scholar, there were few experiences more invigorating than those sessions with the Centennial Lecturer--luminaries like naturalist Stephen Jay Gould, journalist James Fallows, and writer Annie Dillard.

So a word of advice to current Scholars: Get your organic-chemistry homework done early and don't miss the chance to meet Edward James Olmos, one of the premier actors working today, who will be meeting with Scholars on October 10.

Those of you in the broader community: Olmos will present his public lecture, entitled "We're All in the Same Gang," on October 12. It's free. It's timely. You can read more about it on the Barrett Honors College website.

Flinn Scholars

One of the important advantages that Arizona's universities offer is the opportunity for students to conduct research as undergraduates--or even earlier. In this narrative, Laura Moedano, a first-year Flinn Scholar from Yuma, describes her participation this summer in the University of Arizona's KEYS Research Internships, a program she learned about while visiting UA in February as a finalist for the Flinn Scholarship.

Flinn Scholars

Between late next month, when Flinn Scholarship applications go live, and the middle of next May, when we announce the Class of 2011, one of the most frequently asked questions that Foundation staff will receive is:

"So, what is the Flinn Scholarship worth?"

Sometimes, I can just about see the wheels turning in an applicant or parent's mind as I rattle off what the award provides--an allotment for study and travel abroad, funding for room and board, the value of eight semesters of tuition provided by the university. Add it up, and you have a sum near $90,000.

People tend to hear that number in a couple of different ways.

For some people (this was me in the fall of 1993), it sounds almost like the Powerball jackpot, the kind of largess that would change one's life. I was one of those applicants for whom it was either win the Flinn Scholarship or scrape together work-study, a partial scholarship, tons of loans, and still be living pretty frugally--definitely lacking the resources for study abroad, for example.

For other people, the monetary benefit of the scholarship sounds, well, small. I've quoted a figure that's almost insignificant. Over the course of a year or two of researching universities, they've gotten used to the idea of Ivy League sticker prices, to the extent that $200,000 for tuition alone has started to sound normal.

In either case, though, if I answer that question--"What is the Flinn Scholarship worth?"--by talking about money, I've given an answer that isn't really accurate. The Flinn Scholarship doesn't have that much to do with money.

I say that while fully aware of how beneficial it was to not have money worries as an undergraduate. My options expanded dramatically. My capacity to concentrate my energy on my studies, on creative pursuits, on campus activities, on travel--all of that was magnified tenfold by the modest financial freedom that the scholarship permitted me.

But still, the Flinn Scholarship doesn't have that much to do with money. I think this is closer to what it means:

A few weeks ago, I was emailing back and forth with a Scholar alum who was in town to visit family for the weekend. The alum told me that something wasn't right at home; the alum's father was showing indications of some kind of neurological problem. It wasn't an acute event like a stroke, but it had apparently been worsening rapidly over the course of several weeks. The alum, a young doctor, was growing worried.

Because I was about to leave on vacation, I didn't learn for more than a week what happened. The alum ended up taking the father to the emergency room at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center the next day. Within 48 hours, he was in surgery at Barrow Neurological Institute to have multiple brain tumors removed.

Having recently lost my own father to a long struggle with cancer, I understood some of what the alum was experiencing. Still, there was really very little I could do to help. But I knew who could. I wrote the alum another email:

We have a Scholar alum who's the medical director of neurorehabilitation at Barrow. Christina Kwasnica has stayed in close contact with the Foundation, and I'm sure she would be receptive if you run in to any obstacles in the next little while. I'd be happy to put you in touch with her.

Tina Kwasnica ('87), a graduate of Mesa Dobson High School, had returned to Arizona after med school at Northwestern University, and had soon enough assumed important clinical leadership roles at Barrow. Earlier this year, Phoenix Magazine called Tina (pictured on the right) one of metro Phoenix's five "most innovative physicians who are taking patient care into the next frontier."

The alum wrote me back late that night:

Ironically, Dr. Kwasnica is my dad's neurorehab doc and I just got off of the phone with her. I love the Flinn family. Now I am much more reassured, even though I haven't even met her in person, that my dad is getting terrific care. Isn't that funny?

How do you quantify the value of gaining a second family?  I can't. And that's why, when I meet an applicant or a parent, it can be so hard to answer their questions satisfactorily.

If I have enough time, I end up resorting to stories like this one. There are more of them, many more, stories that just about any current or alumni Flinn Scholar could tell of what the Flinn scholarship is really worth.

Photo by flickr user nathangibbs

Flinn Scholars

Here at the Foundation, it can make our heads spin: how quickly Flinn Scholars go from being wide-eyed freshmen living in residence halls for the first time, to being attorneys, parents, small-business owners, research scientists, professional filmmakers--you name it.

Next month, the 25th class of Flinn Scholars begin their undergraduate adventures. With that milestone imminent, we think it's time to celebrate the growth of the Flinn Scholarship Program, the accomplishments of its participants, and the lifelong friendships to which it has given birth.

Actually, we've already begun our commemoration of the Scholars 25th year; our Recognition Dinner this past May was a wonderful chance to rekindle relationships with a few of our alumni and some of our longtime partners at Arizona's universities and in the community.

To continue the celebration, we're inviting our community of nearly 400 alumni to come home. October 1-3, we'll have a weekend-long reunion--we're imagining it as a grown-up version of the annual retreat we hold each August for current Scholars. The weekend will even include a "musicale" reminiscent of the talent show held at the retreat. And we are hoping to invite some of our current Scholars to join in with alumni for that particular activity.

(Alumni, you should already have a save-the-date card on your refrigerator, and you'll shortly receive a formal invitation to the reunion weekend.)

Next spring, we'll follow up with a series of one-day seminars addressing some of Arizona's most important contemporary concerns. Panelists at these seminars will include representatives from the Flinn Scholar alumni community in Arizona--now more than 120 strong. These are individuals making important contributions in a variety of fields, to make Arizona a better place for the next 25 years.

Flinn Scholars

Undeterred by an airline union strike, a still-smoldering Icelandic volcano, or an unusually rainy first week, the 17 members of the Flinn Scholars class of 2009 enjoyed a successful three-week seminar together in the Central European nations of Hungary and Romania.

Flinn Scholars

Each summer the Flinn Scholars Program takes an entire class of Scholars to Budapest, Hungary, and neighboring Romania for a three-week seminar on the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. Here’s a day-by-day account.

Nesima Aberra ('09)

Today was by far the most bittersweet day out of the entire Central European seminar. Bittersweet, because it was the most fun and engaging (in my opinion), while it meant we are near the end of the trip and will soon be leaving Hungary, our home away from home.

In the morning after eating breakfast, we took the metro to Graphisoft Park, an amazing park akin to Silicon Valley that hosts 40 companies from Microsoft to SAP and Servier. The park was very clean and well kept with elements of whimsical creativity and architecture that one would only expect to see around such talented designers. One sculpture that impressed us all was a giant Rubix cube on the lawn. We learned earlier in the trip that the Rubix cube was created by a Hungarian, so it was an obvious symbol of the country’s pride in their scientific and mathematical development.

Meeting Gabor Bajor, the entrepreneur who founded the Graphisoft company, the park and the Aquincum Institute of Technology was an amazing experience. Despite not being a business or science major, I was fascinated by his story of going from a physics major during the Communist-era Hungary to becoming a successful owner of a leading software firm.

Bajor craved bettering himself and bettering those around him, something that was looked down upon at his workplace under the Communist-style economy. His passion to compete and win made him realize that a free market with private ownership would be the most effective. As he said in his lecture, his goal was to “find people better than the owner.” Luckily, once private firms were legal in Hungary, Bajor jumped at the opportunity.

Bajor’s design company was cutting edge and had a competitive advantage because they were the first to do 3D modeling on PCs. This was easier and cheaper and would allow him to compete in the global market. His plan failed to garner attention from large oil companies and big corporations because they didn’t trust the idea, but Bajor said that architects were the perfect customers, because they are generally poorer and were happy to find such an affordable product.

This kind of business sense really connected with all of us and made me really admire Bajor’s passion for understanding his customers, paying attention to their mistakes and creating a product that serves the market best. Now that he has retired from Graphisoft, Bajor heads the Aquincum Institute of Techonology, which he hopes will train software engineers from abroad and make the school a competitor with American universities. According to Bajor, the 21st century is the century of the knowledge-based economy, so education is where his business mind is focused.

After listening to such a genius, we all had lots to talk about as we chowed down on a delicious pizza lunch in the Graphisoft cafeteria. We got to experience more creativity at the Ady Museum, dedicated to the great Hungarian poet Endre Ady. I had never heard of him before, but once reading through his poems with the guidance of our lecturer, Geza Kallay, I understood why he was so revered.

t was fun to analyze the poetry and discuss them with each other and then try our hand at writing our own poems at the Central Coffee House. Strangely, we had another lunch there, which was meant to be a very very early dinner since we would be later attending a ballet in the evening.  Somehow we managed to finish our meal, along with dessert and coffee, as we listened to each other’s hilarious and entertaining amateur poetry.

We had a bit of free time to get ready before the ballet in the evening, but most of us went back to get dressed up since it would be a fancy event. The ballet was nothing short of amazing. We were all given box seats, which gave us not only a great view of the stage but also an air of prestige that is quite uncommon for the average college student.

There were five different performances, but unanimously, the group loved the final performance, entitled Whirling, which featured beautifully executed choreography, hauntingly melancholy music and even rain. The audience was so into the ballet that the applause lasted for over 5 minutes and compelled the dancers to bow over and over again and even come out in front of the curtains once they were already drawn. This was very amusing to my friends and I, because it seemed a tad excessive, but nonetheless, the dancers certainly deserved it after such quality work.

The night ended with ice-cream sundaes at a café outside the opera house and a viewing of the France vs. Mexico soccer game. After such an eventful day experiencing various parts of Hungarian talents, I went to bed quite inspired by the level of cultural immersion we had but also sad that it is almost over.

Flinn Scholars

Each summer the Flinn Scholars Program takes an entire class of Scholars to Budapest, Hungary, and neighboring Romania for a three-week seminar on the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. Here’s a day-by-day account.

Galen Lamphere-Englund ('09)

Today was a much-needed day of rest, recuperation, and reflection. Frightfully early this morning we boarded our bus, which has begun to smell a tad off after several weeks of occupation, and Lszl began the long drive back to Budapest from Cluj-Napoca. After being roused barely an hour into our sleep we all lapsed back into silent, deep sleep during much of the eight hour ride.

There were a few moments of consciousness during the drive, and in those precious glimpses of light I found myself reflecting back on the past week in Transylvania. There has been beautiful humanity: the faces of our gracious hosts in Homorodszentpeter, the inquisitive looks from children outside the one store in Targu Mures; the bouncing Latin club in Cluj, filled with incredibly friendly Iraqi soldiers training with the Romanian military.

The remarkable bonds of commonality between all people is even more apparent here. Whether in small villages that are struggling with integrating into a modern world or in odd clubs that reek of years of smoke and dance, I see similar faces to ones I know back home. While conversing about esoteric political philosophy with a Croatian expatriate in a cozy bar in Pest, I realized, more viscerally than ever before, that there are no true differences between humans anywhere. I find personalities that I know everywhere I go. There are friends of kindred spirit, even though we have may never before met have met. Common faces, bodies, ideas, and, above all, a shared sense of humanity is impossible to escape once one desires to see them. The lessons spurred by that revelation have been potent ones. Our biases, largely created by superficial societies, engender such strong blinders over our eyes that we truly forget each other.

However, the lessons to be learned here by opening one's eyes are not limited to personal ones. While driving through the verdant farmlands of Translyvania I could not help but stare at the horrific testimonials to Chauchescu's tyrannical rule. One of the other Flinns remarked the all the buildings are black and dirty here, a symptom of the many years of unchecked pollution. Giant concrete industrial complexes litter the fields: nuclear reactors, coal power plants, and half-functioning, degrading train stations. Close to one of our stops earlier in the week lay Copsa Mica, one of the most polluted sites in all Europe, where all the trees for ten miles are stained with black soot even fifteen years after most functions stopped. The dictator's mad push for industrialization without any balancing or environmental checks has wrecked havoc on the environment and health of much of Romania. His concrete, Soviet bloc-style complexes for former village dwellers, erected over beautiful old sectors of towns, serve as reminders in the cities of that crazed drive.

Yet today stringent new EU regulations threaten to achieve what even Chauchescu could not: a complete elimination of small farmers and more harmonious village life. Instead of heeding the lessons of unchecked, perilous progress, the entire world is now forging ahead, led by Western industry, in foolishly forgetting the permacultural techniques employed in the old villages. Why do we, as a culture and modern world, continually seek to reinvent our ways in search of new "profits"? Why do we not instead look to the past and observe the lesson that have been taught before?

Perhaps this is the most potent lesson that I am being taught my our travels: Just as there are no different humans around the world, so too are there are no "new ideologies" or "grand ideas." New thoughts, new iterations perhaps, but no truly new individual ideas. Those belong to us all and they are immutable through human time and space. Romania has opened my eyes even wider to realize this truth.

Flinn Scholars

Each summer the Flinn Scholars Program takes an entire class of Scholars to Budapest, Hungary, and neighboring Romania for a three-week seminar on the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. Here’s a day-by-day account.

Dawn Cole ('09)

Today was our last day in Cluj, and everyone was feeling a little gloomy as we began to realize that our time together was quickly coming to an end. Add to that the exhaustion and sadness from the previous night–it was Katherine’s last night with us, after all--and we were a shabby looking group I am sure.

The talk on environmental issues was unfortunately cancelled, but the final question-and-answer session with Zoltan proved to be a very good wrap-up of what we encountered in Romania. I am still amazed by people’s attitudes when they talk about the past--even as Zoltan described the oppression and fear of his childhood, he expressed no sense of need for revenge or retribution. It's as if the people are just tired after so many years of suffering and would rather save the energy to try to improve things than complain about things that cannot be changed. I really appreciate this because, although it is so logical, I personally have not encountered this mentality very often.

During the several hours of free time in the afternoon, Laurel and I visited the Botanical Gardens.  An explosion of 600 varieties of roses separated the present from the past as we left the crowded and noisy street and entered a full rain forest. I felt as though I was back in Costa Rica as we wandered through this temporal oasis. We also found statues of Ceres, the god of grain and cereals, keeping watch over traditional peasant gardens from the Roman age.

Zoltan told me later that much of the nearby Romanian countryside used to be covered by similar forest vegetation, but with the expansion and industrialization of cities, much of it was lost. It is hard to imagine that such serenity once existed in those now-hectic spaces stained by years of human inhabitance.

We walked through the cemetery on our way back to the city, and we took time to notice the birth and death dates. When I think of a cemetery, I have the somewhat “romantic” idea that the people buried there represent the “everyman" who worked and suffered alongside everyone else (I guess any concept of someone being “normal” is somewhat romantic in and of itself, but still).  But upon reflection, I realized that with so many people and so little space, and the size and spectacle of the headstones, these were no ordinary men and women.  They represented the elite, the well-connected, and the wealthy.

And again, pardon the pun, even here there is buried so much history. In one place we saw a set of at least eight graves sharing the same name. As we looked closer, we saw that they were all brothers, born in 1916, 1918, 1919, 1921… and they all shared the same fate, dying in 1944, 1945. Of the eight, only one--the sister--was spared. She still lives today, her gravestone just sitting there waiting to be finished.   

For me, this day just showed that the history of this place is everywhere--you just have to look a little closer to discover the story. It all makes me wonder--how aware are people living in these ancient cities of the history of the places that surround them? Does their knowledge of the past increase their sense of nationalism, or are they like the many Arizonans who have never visited the wonder of the world that sits in their backyard (the Grand Canyon)?  How much of their identity as a Hungarian or Romanian is tied to the physical infrastructure and how much is simply rooted in the culture of the people that surround them?  Do Hungarians miss their beloved land lost in the Treaty of Treanon with such passion because they lost those physical monuments that embody the past, or because of the lifestyles and peoples those lands supported?   And finally, just as the forests were transformed first to agricultural lands and then to cities, what will these cities eventually become? How will the complex histories of these lands shape their future?

Flinn Scholars

Each summer the Flinn Scholars Program takes an entire class of Scholars to Budapest, Hungary, and neighboring Romania for a three-week seminar on the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. Here’s a day-by-day account.

Adam Martinez ('09)

Several somnolent Scholars were greeted with a rudely early wake-up call in the form of gale-force winds  at four in the morning. Ultimately, the damage was small: one broken window in Sachi and Emma's sleeping quarters. Needless to say, it gave them quite a fright, and many of us rode out the rest of the storm questioning the structural integrity of each of our small huts.

The morning began again under better pretenses at around eight, when we awoke to the smell of fresh rain and the sound of birds chirping in Romanian. Herded by our responsible chaperones, we made our way to the bus to depart to Cluj. The next few minutes saw us waving goodbye to both the immaculate lawn, upon which the hotel management had forbidden us to tread, and the looming Rimetean mountain, to which the thunderstorm had likewise denied us access. We got settled on the bus and, after a bout of bleary-eyed yet blessedly-brief reflections, took advantage of the opportunity to supplement our meager sleep supply.

The duration of the actual bus ride remains a mystery. Each passenger was either still caught up in the previous eventful night, looking forward to Cluj, or happily dreaming of shower curtains, peanut butter, and marshmallows, three objects that the Iron Curtain seems to have permanently scared out of Central Europe.

We crested the last hill before the city of Cluj, the supposed laundry Mecca of Romania, a detail that was anything but unappreciated by this ragged band of sink-launderers. Unfortunately, we appeared to have been misled, as laundromats were as elusive there as they were in every other city we had visited. Nevertheless, our attitudes were far brighter than our travel-worn attire would suggest, and we marched on proudly, if somewhat odorously.

After a brief stop at the hotel to gather our wits, we were whisked away to the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at Babe?-Bolyai University, the premier public university of Romania. Our lecture was on the Romanian economy, and it was given by Professor Michaela Lutas in a stuffy, humid room in which the air hadn't been conditioned until our arrival. By the time the atmosphere became bearable, the lecture had finished and we'd exhausted our questions. Regardless, it was quite informative, particularly about Romania's economy just prior to the economic downturn of 2008.

Next on the agenda was a themed video scavenger hunt in the heart of Cluj. Our gang of Flinn Scholars split into four smaller groups, each of which was handed a themed list of clues. The clues (perhaps objectives or directions would be more accurate) were the same for everybody, things like "Sing a Disney song in a public place" or "Taste an authentic Romanian dessert." The themes, however, differed, and included "Transition," "Contradiction," "History," and one that appears to have slipped my mind.

It's safe to say that this activity became the landmark experience of the day--not to suggest that our later folk-dancing lesson wasn't amazing as well. I'm positive that, during the scavenger hunt, each group experienced a great variety of wonderful things, but the only group I can truly speak for is my own. Our first stop was a public fountain swarming with children. It was here that we fulfilled our "Take a video of your group playing" clue. Several clues later and on our way to checking off the "Take a bus to a public monument" clue, we stopped by a fruit stand for sustenance in the form of a kilo of ripe cherries. The rest of the scavenger hunt was a big happy blur, with our enthusiastic, albeit roadweary, band of travelers proceeding fearlessly onward and leaving nothing but good memories and a trail of cherry pits in our wake.