OXFORD, Miss. – Two University of Mississippi students have zeroed in on the challenges of a rapidly changing world and have been named Barksdale Award winners for their efforts.
Cara Thorne of Toronto and Yi Wei of Starkville, both sophomores in the UM Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, were presented the awards Wednesday night at spring convocation. Both students are determined to complete projects that have personal meaning and the potential for global impact.
Video by Nathan Latil
The $5,000 award supports creative, courageous projects proposed by students who are willing to take risks with their time and efforts and who propose ambitious, independent programs of study, research or humanitarian effort. The Barksdale Awards were established to encourage students to test themselves in environments that don’t have the built-in safeties of a classroom, teaching lab or library.
“The Barksdale Award gives our students an opportunity to make us jealous,” said Douglass Sullivan-González, dean of the SMBHC. “In different ways, Cara and Ena are determined to cross boundaries in order to cherish and protect the individual, the human spark, at the dead center of a cultural maelstrom. That commitment takes heart as well as intellect, and we are proud of these two citizen scholars.”
Thorne, a chemistry major, plans to use her award to learn Mandarin Chinese and then use it as a medical volunteer in New York’s Chinese community. Her eventual goal is to work as a doctor serving Asian populations.
Wei, a pre-pharmacy major who goes by “Ena,” wants to travel back to her home province of Guangxi, China, to help preserve the heritage of her great-grandmother’s homemade noodles. Her plan includes documenting recipes, interviewing cooks to learn their techniques and record their memories, and learning to make specialty noodles herself.
“I came to the United States in the sixth grade, when I was 12,” Wei said. “The main thing I remember, even though I only met my great-grandmother once, is the bowl of noodles she made for me. The rice paper noodles are in a clear broth and they look really ordinary, but they melt in your mouth. I took a bite and it was great.
“She made them from scratch, and I thought it was extraordinary that an 80-year-old lady could do that.”
Cara Thorne, a sophomore in the University of Mississippi's Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, is one of the winners of a 2012 Barksdale Award. A chemistry major from Toronto, Thorne plans to use her award to learn Mandarin Chinese and then spend time in New York volunteering with Downtown Hospital's Chinese Community Partnership for Health Program. UM photo by Nathan Latil.
First, Wei will research Chinese food culture, conduct oral history interviews and then visit her great-grandmother’s village and other small villages in the province, conducting a personal investigation into four noodle dishes. On her return, she’ll organize a “blog for noodles of Guangxi,” providing historical background, recipes with visual supports and an index of ingredients.
She hopes her project will provide public access to Guangxi’s noodle culinary history and spark interest in a precious heritage of handmade noodles before that tradition disappears, as supercenters replace farmers’ markets and fast food chains crowd out street vendors.
“I am grateful the university offered this opportunity, because this is not something every university has and they are just so open here,” Wei said. “You really are challenged. It’s not just about doing the practical thing that will offer immediate change; instead, you are encouraged to dare to dream. At my age, I don’t think you should know what you want to do for the rest of your life, and you don’t know until you try.”
Thorne, the other winner, interned at a Toronto hospital and was present when a doctor had no way to tell a patient who was fluent only in Mandarin Chinese that her metastatic breast cancer would require mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation. Powerless to help, Thorne vowed that when she becomes a physician, she would have the tools to help such patients, including both language and cultural sensitivity.
Yi Wei, a sophomore in the University of Mississippi's Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, is one of the winners of a 2012 Barksdale Award. Wei, a pre-pharmacy major from Starkville, plans to use her award to travel to China to document and help preserve the noodle-making traditions of the country's Guangxi province. UM Photo by Nathan Latil.
Her Barksdale Award will be an early and significant step toward that goal. Over the next year, Thorne plans to learn basic Mandarin and, in May 2013, travel to New York to interact on an everyday level with the Chinese population there and volunteer in Downtown Hospital’s Chinese Community Partnership for Health Program. Through her efforts, she hopes to attain “respectable proficiency” and begin a lifelong journey to study Mandarin and gain an appreciation for the culture and customs of the people who speak it.
The knowledge is essential to her pursuit of a medical career on a continent with a rapidly growing Chinese population, Thorne said.
“I want to be more appreciative of other cultures and other languages and I think I opened that window when I came to the University of Mississippi,” she said. “It was a big culture shock to come from a big city like Toronto in the North to a small town in the South.”
Counting Yei and Thorne, the SMBHC has given 14 Barksdale Awards since the award’s inception in 2005. Students must submit applications with a 1,000-word project proposal, a budget for the project, resume, transcripts and two letters of recommendation from professors.