Summer 2021

2021 UConn ECE Scholarship Winners

Posted on July 1, 2021July 19, 2021 by

UConn Early College Experience recognized 10 outstanding UConn ECE Students this year, awarding each a $500 scholarship, which can be used at any institution. Winners are high school seniors, who have taken or are currently taking at least one UConn Early College Experience course and have excelled in the area in which they submitted their project. Learn more about the UConn ECE Student Scholarships on our Scholarships page.

Excellence in the Arts, Humanities, or Social Sciences

Winners demonstrate academic achievement and a potential for future academic and professional accomplishments in a field focusing on the Arts, Humanities, and/or Social Sciences.

Emily Tarinelli

Marine Science Magnet High School of Southeastern CT

Literary analysis essay: Feminism in the Absence of Independent Women

Ayushman Choudhury

Ellington High School

Rhetorically effective argument video: The True Cost of War

Kiersten Sundell,

Thomaston High School.

Portrait: Am I Next?

Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematic

Winners demonstrate academic achievement and a potential for future academic and professional accomplishments in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and/or Mathematics.

Conner Larocque

Hamden High School

Video: Autonomous Siphon Coffee Machine

Grace Pendleton

The Morgan School

Model: Gothic Cathedral

Emma Bator-Blanchet

Rockville High School

Video: How Soap Kills Coronavirus

Excellence in Civic and Community Engagement

Winners are academically successful, are already making a positive difference in their town or neighborhood, and are inspiring others to do the same. The students chosen for this award must be a UConn ECE Student who demonstrates ambition and self-drive evidenced by outstanding achievement in both school and their community.

Stephen Duhamel

Montville High School

Development and promotion projects that strengthen peer interactions and wellness

Lindsay Haukom

Edwin O. Smith High School

Quaraconcerts, free virtual harp concerts offered to anyone who wanted happiness and human connection

Matthew Keating

Holy Cross High School

Co-founder of Step by Step, a nonprofit organization that helps the less fortunate in the community

Anirudh Krishnan

Ridgefield High School

Founder of the Ridgefield Music Mentors program

Photos: Finding Joy, Finding Beauty, Finding Purpose.

Posted on July 1, 2021July 19, 2021 by

By Elizabeth Kindt

The artist who photographed the cover of this summer’s 2021 UConn ECE Magazine is UConn ECE student Cindy Santiago from New Britain High School. Cindy’s photograph titled “Tulips in the Springtime” was a photo taken during the month of May that reminded her of Copenhagen. In her submission Cindy writes that Copenhagen has, “the prettiest fields full of tulips which is what inspired me to take this photo. I made sure to angle it in a way that makes you look like you’re inside the field in a way.” Congratulations to our cover artist Cindy, and thank you for finding the joy and beauty in our Springtime Submission Contest.

Thanks to all who submitted photos and congratulations to the follow students whose photos appear in within the pages of the magazine:

Brian Carson, Seymour High School. The focus within the many. White flowers on the branch of a tree. One is in focus, despite them all being nearly the same, this sole flower is the most beautiful.

Jada Vercosa. Southington High School. Watch sweet magnolias in bloom! Magnolias are a beautiful flowering tree and the blooms are so delicate. The light pink color and petals can be seen where I live and they always make me smile.

Alessandra Sanchez. Montville High School. Pretty Little Thing. Just saw an email about this and I love photography so enjoy 🙂

Janeesa Libanori. E. C. Goodwin Technical High School, Life is like a flower, plant the seeds and watch them bloom. As life begins, the “flower” gets watered and grows. This refers to babies growing up into young adults and as they grow, you watch them bloom. Parents teach their children how to grow up and strive on their own.

Srilekha Kadimi. Amity Regional High School. Live Life In Full Bloom. Fully blossomed magnolia.

2021 UConn ECE Wallace Stevens Poetry Contest Winners

Posted on July 1, 2021November 29, 2023 by

By Sean Frederick Forbes, PhD

Assistant Professor-in-Residence

Director, Creative Writing Program

UConn English Department

As my fellow judges and I read through the submission packets for this year’s UConn ECE Wallace Stevens Poetry Contest, we were impressed by the varying subjects and topics that students chose to write about. What the three of us discovered was that many of the poems moved us to think about why one chooses to write poetry and what does one hope to convey in poetic verse? We considered why poetry, if not the written word in all genres, matters as we continue to live through a devastating global pandemic. As I write this, I’m reminded of the last two lines of the poem “The Summer Day” by the late Mary Oliver, in which the speaker invites the reader to ponder this direct and undemanding, yet highly philosophical, question: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” If one is a writer, especially a poet, the theme of “Finding Joy, Finding Beauty, Finding Purpose” might very well be an earnest and awe-inspiring response. It’s a theme that best conveys how I’d like to introduce the first, second, and third prize-winning poems, respectively.

<<Text redacted>>

Charlotte Watts’ “After ‘Chinese Satellite’ by Phoebe Bridgers” is an ekphrastic, usually a poem that describes, or is inspired by, or speaks to another work of art, typically visual art, but here we have a poem based on a song by a 2021 Grammy-nominated musician. A reader’s first impulse might be to listen to Bridgers’ song, but the splendor of this poem is in engaging with the images and phrases, and also the myriad narratives Watts creates throughout in lines such as: “maybe I would sleep easier if / there were ufos over my street.”

Zara Williamson’s “To Find God in Me” is a spoken word poem that acts as a homily for a speaker who confronts and analyzes how body image, the mother/daughter relationship, and religion affect a teenage girl’s life. Williamson uses the pivotal refrain “But Momma says” three times in the poem to convey that despite any misunderstandings, tensions, and upheavals that the speaker may have in her teenage life, her mother listens to understand, thus allowing the speaker to write confidently with lines such as: “I talk to the sky sometimes / I imagine She listens with her ears open as my heart / Loud as my voice ringing in the Church bathroom.”

A reader will find joy, beauty, and purpose in these three poems since the personalities and voices of each speaker convey so acutely what it means to live and write in the 21^st century.

after "chinese satellite" by phoebe bridgers

maybe i wouldn't cry like i do

if i thought someone

could hold me close, whisper

the sky was carved, the mountains

whittled, the plains roped out;

all for you.

if they could forgive me

(when i was twelve and my genes were poisonous

fifteen and couldn't look at a boy while i broke his heart

seventeen and speeding serotonin out of myself)

if they could know everything bad in my bones and love me still.

i wish 'want' would turn over easy to 'belief'

but i was never skilled at self-persuasion

maybe i would sleep easier if

there were ufos over my street -

grand government conspiracies or just a lonely cryptid

making his way through a distant forest,

anomaly eyes locked on the same moon.

i want to be made by more than coincidence,

to have some code built within my bones, saying

here is what you do. here is what is all means.

i knew you the whole time.

Biography

Charlotte Watts is an 18 year old writer from Windsor, Connecticut. She has read at Sunken Garden and was a finalist for the 2020 Smith College High School Poetry Award. She is going to Lesley University in the fall to major in Creative Writing.

Context of Poem

As a lifelong agnostic Quaker, my relationship with faith is complex and fluid. In this poem, I wrestle with the emotional consequences of non-belief, as well as the longing to know a higher meaning.

To Find the God in Me

I wear this body like my Sunday morning Church dress

Like this mahogany skin does not sit right on my bones

This hair -- tight coils that dance along my scalp-- fits like a bright pink bonnet

Too tight and too much

But momma says I'm pretty

My reflection looks a lot like stained glass these days

Where my face is a puzzle of pieces that is almost unrecognizable most of the time

But momma says she sees God in me

I suppose these hands are like my Church gloves

Palms white and soft as silk

These are prayer hand s, you see

I talk to the sky sometimes

I imagine She listens with her ears open as my heart

Loud as my voice ringing in the Church bathroom

Asking what I will be

But momma says God hears me

So I earthquake the Church floorboards into pixie dust

Momma, God and I dance on top of clouds and my Church dress fits just right

I peer into the stained glass windows

And my reflection looks like someone I know

Biography

Zara Williamson is a rising senior at Westhill High School and has had a special interest in English and poetry from a young age. Throughout high school, Zara has been involved in various community service programs at Westhill and in Stamford, including her role in organizing a local poetry slam in honor of Juneteenth. She hopes to continue to be involved in the broader Stamford community through her love and involvement in the arts, and wants to thank UCONN for considering her work.

Context of Poem

“To Find the God in Me” explores the stressors of the teenage experience, including the developing and nonlinear journey towards positive self-image. The poem, written from the perspective of a young teenage girl, analyzes the role of religion and motherhood in soothing stressors, specifically that of imposter syndrome and body dysmorphia.