Alumni

Dozens of Oberlin alumni associated with this office have gone to earn post-baccalaureate degrees, and below you will find a sample of alumni and descriptions of their current professional activities.

Monica Bielski, Ph.D. (OC ‘97), McNair Scholar

Monica Bielski is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She grew up in a working-class family in Youngstown, Ohio, once a prosperous steel-producing city with a strong labor union tradition. She was the first in her family to attend college, and she graduated with a degree in labor and trade union studies and government (independent major). Monica was a member of the first cohort of the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Program. As a McNair scholar, Monica worked closely with Professors Chris Howell and Eve Sandberg in the Politics department on a study of British industrial relations and state intervention.

            After Oberlin, Monica attended Rutgers University to study industrial relations, completing her Ph.D. in 2005. Her research examines how labor unions in the U.S. have addressed lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues, and can be found in WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society , The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor , and Gender Diversity and Trade Unions: International Perspectives.

Jeffrey Arellano Cabusao, Ph.D. (OC ‘97), McNair Scholar

Jeffrey Arellano Cabusao is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Bryant University in Providence, Rhode Island. Jeffrey graduated with a degree in English and cross-cultural ethnic studies (independent major). As a McNair scholar, he worked closely with Professors Sandy Zagarell and Caroline Jackson-Smith, studying African American writers and Filipino American aesthetics and politics. Jeffrey was an active Obie, and worked closely with Asian American Alliance and other campus organizations.

            In 2001, Jeffrey earned a Master of Arts in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and, in 2007, he earned his Ph.D. in English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Jeffrey's writings have appeared in Amerasia Journal, Cultural Logic, The Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics, and Philippine Studies. He is presently working on a book project with Anne Lacsamanaon (Hamilton College) on the ways in which cultural workers and activists in the Filipino diaspora are developing forms of feminisms that refuse to see “Third World” women's liberation and national sovereignty as incompatible.

Lorenzo Candelaria, Ph.D. (OC ‘95), Mellon Fellow

Lorenzo Candelaria is currently an Assistant Professor of Musicology at University of Texas at Austin. He received his bachelor of music degree from Oberlin in 1995, along with the James H. Hall Prize in Music History. In May 2001, Lorenzo received his Ph.D. with distinction from Yale University in historical musicology. The research for his dissertation was conducted in Madrid and Toledo, Spain, and was sponsored by a J. William Fulbright grant. He has presented his research on music, liturgy, and popular religion in renaissance Spain at the International Medieval Congress at University of Leeds and, more recently, at Yale University's 300 th anniversary celebration. Lorenzo is also a professional violinist and ensemble coach with Walt Disney World's Mariachi Cobre, which was recently nominated for a Grammy Award for their collaboration with the Boston Pops Orchestra on The Latin Album (Victor).

            His books include American Music: A Panorama (co-authored with Daniel Kingman) and The Rosary Cantoral: Ritual and Social Design in a Chantbook from Early Renaissance Toledo. He is currently writing a book on music in Mexican Catholicism.

Shannon McDaniel, Ph.D. (OC ‘96), BP America Science Scholar and Mellon Fellow

Shannon McDaniel came to Oberlin with dreams of becoming a marine mammalogist. She entered her first year with a BP America Fellowship in the Sciences and a Presidential Scholarship. As a Mellon fellow, Shannon conducted research with Professor Steven Wojtal in the geology department on the San Juan Islands, in Washington state. Along the way, she became fascinated with the beauty of rocks and finished her undergraduate degree in both biology and geology.

            After nearly three years of kayaking and hiking in the Northeast, she returned to graduate school in Seattle to study ice behavior. Shannon earned her Ph.D. in earth and space sciences from the University of Washington. She completed her dissertation, “New Techniques for the Investigation of Deformation Mechanisms in the Flow of Fine-Grained I h ,” in 2005. Shannon has published numerous articles and worked for the US Geological Survey.

            A Department of Energy fellowship took her to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where she fell in love with the mountains and material science, her husband, and most importantly, had a daughter. Shannon now lives and works in Los Alamos with her family.

Jamie Trnka, Ph.D. (OC ‘98), McNair Scholar

Jamie Trnka is an Assistant Professor of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Scranton. She graduated from Oberlin with majors in comparative literature and German. As a McNair scholar, Jamie worked closely with Professor Steven Huff in the German/Russian department, conducting research on German literature and collective memory. In her senior year at Oberlin, Jamie received a Fulbright Research Fellowship to study at the University of Cologne. Following graduation, she spent a year in Germany doing research at the National Press Office in Bonn.

            Jamie completed her Ph.D. in comparative literature at Cornell University. Her research interests include documentary literature and the relationship of aesthetics to historical narrative; German-Latin American relationships, representations of political violence (especially terrorism and the 1968 student movements in Germany and Mexico); and post-colonial theory and minority writing in Germany. She has taught courses on autobiography, multilingualism, and cultural translation. Her research has appeared in New German Critique and Defending the Homeland: Historical Perspectives on Radicalism, Terrorism and State Responses .