Leor Shtull-Leber '12
When applying to colleges, Leor Shtull-Leber '12 looked for a school that attracted creative people. At Brown, she found them - but she says she found herself intimidated and "in awe" of the "amazing" students on campus.
A self-described "floater," Shtull-Leber found a place for herself in the Jewish community, taking on leadership roles in Brown/RISD Hillel that boosted her confidence.
"It is good to have a home base where you feel comfortable in a large campus filled with intelligent and creative people," she says.
Now, Shtull-Leber says her biggest regret is not having enough time to meet even more people. "I wish I knew better," she says. "I wish I could just be friends with everyone."
Shtull-Leber, a cognitive science concentrator, also teaches Hebrew at Temple Emanu-El's religious school and the Wheeler School and serves on the Hillel Board of Trustees. She is a former design editor for The Herald.
This summer, she will supervise a five-week trip to national parks in the western United States for teenagers. A similar trip to Alaska last summer inspired Shtull-Leber's commencement speech.
"I was noticing the way that people were literally crossing rivers," Shtull-Leber says. "I wasn't very good at it, but other people would run across."
In Shtull-Leber's speech, river crossing serves as a metaphor for the way students approach their undergraduate education. She says the idea of "learning to cross a river" dovetails with the growth that students experience during their years at Brown.
Her speech also draws on her own time at Brown and her initial insecurity.
While Shtull-Leber says she is excited for her opportunity to share these ideas with her graduating class, she also feels the disappointment of students whose speeches were not chosen. She organized the publication of drafts of these speeches on The Herald's website.
In the fall, Shtull-Leber, an Ann Arbor, Mich., native, will move to New York City to begin work at a digital marketing agency.
Tara Kane Prendergast '12.5
"I see myself being an activist - I'm just not sure in what form," says Tara Kane Prendergast '12.5 says of her post-college plans. But Prendergast, who has already distinguished herself through service work on campus, does not need to wait to become an activist.
Prendergast has dedicated her time at Brown to working in local communities and learning about issues of social injustice. When she first arrived on College Hill, she participated in the University Community Academic Advising Program, which encourages students to consider community involvement and social activism an integral part of the academic experience. "My whole time at Brown was informed by being a part of that community," she says.
After being homeschooled in Colorado and attending the Armand Hammer United World College in New Mexico, Prendergast came to Brown eager to experience the "active and engaged" campus she had heard about.
Prendergast decided to concentrate in history after taking classes with Associate Professor of History Naoko Shibusawa. Shibusawa's emphasis on the construction of cultural and socioeconomic systems provided Prendergast with a backdrop for the political activism work in which she was involved.
The Brown Refugee Youth Tutoring and Enrichment program, which pairs University student tutors with refugee families, has been the "heart and soul" of Prendergast's time on campus, she says.
In her Commencement speech, Prendergast will draw on her experience working with Alice, a student she has mentored since freshman year. When Prendergast first met the family, they had just moved to South Providence from a refugee camp in Tanzania, and Alice, who was eight years old, spoke almost no English. The two worked together to build Alice's vocabulary, and now Prendergrast helps her with her homework.
Prendergast's speech will address how Brown students as individuals fit into the larger global community, both in terms of the opportunities they have been given and the accompanying responsibilities these opportunities entail. "I'm not trying to say that everyone should go out and change the world," she says. "But we can all make choices about how we contribute."
