Scholar-in-Residence

A New Partnership with an Extraordinary Scholar-in-Residence

By Renata Cioth Mulder P’17

A grant from the prestigious E.E. Ford Foundation made possible the launch of a new exciting program in the 2020-21 academic year.

Despite the burdens of the pandemic, at Ursuline learning for the 21st Century has evolved in new ways. At the start of the second quarter, on November 24, 2020, Adria Armbrister, PhD, ’94 was named as the school’s inaugural Scholar-in-Residence. Adria was excited and honored to return to Ursuline, and was enthusiastically welcomed by Eileen Davidson.

“Dr. Armbrister is sharing with students her international expertise in economic development, global health, and ethnic equality,” said President Davidson. “We are extremely fortunate that Dr. Armbrister has both realworld understanding as an international project manager in Latin America as well as academic experience at the college level. Her involvement will enrich our academics, lift up understudied perspectives, and help Ursuline as we strive for a more inclusive academic experience. And we are grateful that this Scholar-in-Residence program is made possible by an E.E. Ford Foundation grant.” Collaboration Across the Curriculum

Dr. Armbrister partnered with teachers in the Social Studies and English departments. Notably, she also worked with students examining global problems and solutions through our signature Global Scholars program. One topic was an exploration of the many reasons for Venezuela’s current socio-economic difficulties.

Our unique Personal Development program also benefitted from this partnership with Dr. Armbrister.

And, although the focus of her work was with our high school, Dr. Armbrister made time to meet with two Middle School Personal Development classes. Her dynamic yet welcoming approach immediately put the classes at ease and lively discussions ensued. Dr. Armbrister’s conversation with our Model United Nations club included sharing her experience of living in Peru and Colombia and discussing the obstacles to improvement of the quality of life in South America. Dr. Armbrister congratulated our students on their involvement in Model UN, noting that it helped them to see the reality of

the world around them, to engage in respectful conflict and debate, and to be agile in their thinking. Stellar Education and Experience

Adria has said, “I started on my career path at Ursuline, learning Latin, Greek and Spanish and being a member of the International Club. I became enamored with the idea of working internationally, especially with the United Nations. Ms. Saraceni was very encouraging, so I felt I could certainly achieve my goal.” She also credits Ursuline teachers Ms. Perry and Sister Martha for their important influence on her education and interest in languages. Adria is now fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and has studied French.

Adria earned a B.A. in History-Sociology from Columbia University and has been awarded three Master’s degrees: Master of Arts and Master of Philosophy in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University, and a Master of Arts in International Relations & Economics from Johns Hopkins. She then completed her PhD in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia.

Dr. Armbrister has extensive experience in education; she has served as an Adjunct Professor at New York University and as lecturer at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Her career also includes almost a decade in program management at the Inter-American Development Bank in Lima, Peru, in Bogota, Colombia, and in Washington, DC.

She is currently the founder and Executive Director of Nzoku Consultores. Her clients include the Global Health Council, UNICEF Ethiopia, Econometria, and the Pan American Health Organization. She provides strategic guidance to support policy changes and implement programming to improve outcomes among populations worldwide.

Dr. Armbrister has frequently been invited to speak as a panelist or presenter at various conferences around the world. Additionally, she has published articles in Social Science & Medicine, American Journal of Public Health, Journal of the National Medical Association (JNMA), Handbook of Health Psychology and the Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine.

A meeting in Peru in 2017- Eileen Davidson led an Ursuline student trip to Peru while Adria was working at the Inter-American Development Bank there.

First Person Account from Our Scholar-in-Residence

My initiation as the Ursuline Scholar-in-Residence started in November 2020 with a series of sessions for Mr. Bratt’s Global Seminar where I covered in some depth how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted Indigenous Peoples and Afro-descendants in Latin America. We also discussed the community-based responses and treatments employed by these groups to treat and reduce the spread locally and regionally.

In December 2020, I was happy to return to Mr. Bratt’s class to outline the parameters and history of Venezuelan migration within the region. That was a prelude to a presentation by one of my student mentees, Kimberly Jasmin, who is a master’s degree student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Kimberly presented on her research on maternal outcomes for Venezuelan migrant women in Colombia. She also discussed post-graduate education

in international development with students to get them thinking about their educational options should they continue with their interest in global affairs.

My first semester at Ursuline was also enriched by a series of classes I was honored to lead with Ms. Pisano’s Personal Development classes with the 6th and 7th grades, and the 12th grade Peer Mediators. My goal in these sessions was to add to Ursuline’s commitment to creating a culture of equity within the school and beyond. Toward that end, I was delighted to lead a session on moving from allyship, a topic that girls understood very well thanks to their sessions with Ms. Pisano, to leadership and advocacy for equity and justice. We discussed the fact that allyship is based on privilege—we have the opportunity to be allies to those who are excluded because we occupy some space of privilege. The class concluded that those of us with privilege who care about justice need to become conflicttransformers and leaders/advocates and do this to the best of our ability knowing that none of us does everything perfectly all the time.

With the 7th grade, we delved into images of “perfection” for girls, mainly on social media. We explored both the enduring qualities of “perfect/popular girls” (fairly stable over the decades), the reality that beauty does not have only one standard and how the image of perfection is used to sell products and services. The result is that we have to balance fantasy (that is fun at times) with the reality of who we are and accept both in ourselves and others.

And with the Peer Mediators, I was happy to share some cases that exemplified how the skills of conflict resolution they have learned with Ms. Pisano can be useful in everyday life and particularly in college. We discussed how the ability to see beyond the surface and be educated about a range of social issues and services—from gendered racism to intimate partner violence—could prepare Dr. Armbrister and 6th grade them to be resources for themselves and Personal others and thus address critical issues around Development class. equity and justice. In the second semester of the 2020-21 academic year, I supported the Global Scholars in the conceptualization and dissemination of their Capstone Projects. I also provided inputs and co-lecture as part of the 11th Grade Honors American History curriculum. I worked with AP English to further integrate equity perspectives into a curriculum that students have referred to as “super woke” - so I felt absolutely no pressure there (!!). The goal of the work with Social Studies was to increase the recognition of the contributions of many populations to the United States, most notably Asian Americans, American Indians, Latinxs and Irish Americans and deepening links between history and our current day realities. To this end, I lent my support to the efforts of the exemplary 11 Honors Social Studies faculty on topics such as the 14th Amendment and citizenship; links between Reconstruction and resistance to Universal Health Care and Access in the United States; and tracking parallel historical events in history, particularly as they reflect the increasing diversity of the country after the Civil War. One key reference for my work with the 11 Honors Social Studies faculty was the New York Times’ 1619 Project, an “ongoing initiative…to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” I’m excited to serve as the school’s first Scholar-inResidence and hope this tradition continues into the future.