Dr. Sue Schneider’s career as an applied anthropologist has brought her new opportunities to learn and allowed her to impact the lives and well being of the communities in which she has lived and worked. Her interests have always included community health, prevention and health promotion, and her
dissertation research at MSU reflected those interests: she examined women’s grassroots health organizing in Mexico, and the strategies of health promoters as they merged different healing traditions within their communities. She published a book on this research, titled “Mexican Community Health and the Politics of Health Reform” (2010). Now, she works as an applied anthropologist with Larimer County Extension at Colorado State University (CSU) where she promotes community health and well-being herself! (Although the circumstances are much different from what she studied in Mexico.)
After graduating from MSU, Dr. Schneider held a teaching postdoc at Moravian College, but came to the decision that she really wanted to do applied work with communities. She took a position at Duke University in the Division of Community Health, running a program called Durham Health Innovations. The focus was on addressing health disparities, and she was able to put her community organizing skills into action conducting neighborhood-level interventions in chronic disease prevention. While at Duke, she also pursued training and certification as an integrative health coach and began a private consulting practice working with physicians within the medical center. After stepping into the throes of motherhood, she adjusted her career more towards her private coaching practice in order to better maintain her own wellness.
In 2015 she moved to Fort Collins, Colorado with her family and began working for CSU Extension, where she builds community programming and provides education in Larimer County. After conducting a needs assessment, she has focused her work largely on healthy aging and age-friendly communities. One grant she helped write funded a program called Senior Access Points, which is creating a county-wide network and outreach strategies to better connect individuals and their families with aging-related resources. Another grant funds work to support the self-care of grandparents raising their grandchildren. She also draws on her certification as a health coach to provide community-based training on topics such as behavior change and mindfulness.
Fort Collins is a community full of motivated people, so the impacts of her work are gratifyingly easy to see. Dr. Schneider especially enjoys bringing practical strategies and resources to people who are struggling with stress and everyday life challenges. “Grandparents are suffering because the conditions that cause them to need to step in and raise their grandkids tend to be devastating,” she says. “It is powerful to see them get support.”
Dr. Schneider identifies herself as a lifelong learner, and her career has in many ways been a
“winding road” full of interesting surprises. For new anthropology graduates, Dr. Schneider suggests keeping your curiosity alive and pursuing what you find interesting and what makes you happy. “We can create new spaces for Anthropologists, but we have to be a little bit fearless about it and trust the value that we bring.” Dr. Schneider credits Dr. Linda Hunt for helping her understand and appreciate the value of applied anthropology, although all of her mentors offered unique and helpful lessons and supported her throughout her studies. She also appreciates the solid foundation in anthropological theory and training that she got through the department.
This summer, Dr. Schneider will be stepping in as Interim Director of Larimer County Extension, and looks forward to getting a chance to see a larger horizon from that position.
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I first became interested in anthropology as an undergraduate at the University of California, Riverside. A class with Dr. Robin Nelson introduced me to topics related to parent-child interactions. I had recently become a mother and I was extremely interested in those topics. Dr. Nelson’s class also assured me that even though biological anthropology had a dark history of institutional racism, new scholars are actively changing the discipline to be more inclusive. Hence, pursuing a degree in anthropology would allow me to ask challenging questions that would be relevant for marginalized communities. Dr. Nelson also gave me the opportunity to discuss with her research articles I would find outside of class. After reading the work of Dr. Fujita, I was attracted to the idea of studying breast milk components from a biocultural perspective.
Dr. Beth Drexler has been very research active recently, thanks to an American Institute for Indonesian Studies Luce Fellowship (2014-2016) and a Fulbright (2015-2017). Her current project explores human rights and memories of violence in the aftermath of authoritarian rule in Indonesia and Timor-Leste (known as East Timor during its occupation by Indonesia). Her next book, tentatively titled “Human Rights, Transitional Justice and History in Indonesia,” analyzes the process of producing and circulating knowledge about past human rights violations in and through public culture, film, fiction, art, courtrooms, documents, and efforts to write new histories. She’s conducted archival research, interviews, and participant observation in relation to the past, and is also working with organizations to explore new issues in the democratic present.
Art Crime at the University of Glasgow’s Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research to campus for a week. During this time, she visited archaeology classes, met with faculty and students, gave a public lecture, and offered a graduate workshop. Over 90 people attended her lecture from campuses and cities across the state and over two dozen watched it streaming online. The fund provided the lecture with the foundational funding to secure co-sponsors for the event. Needless to say, it was an enormous success and we are excited to be in the planning stages for our next annual lecture.
Welcome to the Spring 2017 newsletter! As usual, there is a lot going on at this time of the year. I am happy to announce that we have hired Dr. Fredy Rodriguez as our new teaching professor. He will be an important link to new undergraduate majors, mentor teaching assistants, and bring a strong interest in cutting-edge pedagogies to our faculty. While serving as the interim undergraduate advisor this past year, Dr. Rodriguez initiated an Anthropology Showcase that will highlight work that undergraduates have produced in different anthropology classes and lab experiences. We will host our first showcase this coming fall, open to the public. This will be a great way to celebrate our students’ accomplishments and highlight Anthropology.
In 2011 Dr. Masako Fujita founded the Biomarker Laboratory for Anthropological Research, where she and her students could conduct cutting edge anthropology research using biomarkers: measurable biochemical substances in bodies that can indicate various aspects of health. Recent grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the National Science Foundation are funding two separate projects that together will address how variations in the beneficial contents of human milk, like antibodies and vitamins, relate to maternal health and the sex of the infant. There are substantial disparities in child mortality related to household income and sex of the infant, particularly in places in the world where gender discrimination and malnutrition are common. One contributing factor may be the level of protection that children receive from their mothers’ milk. One of the components now being measured in the lab is milk sIgA, an antibody that helps with immune protection for infants.
First Place “Stone Skipping in Matemwe“
Second Place “Fishing Boat on the Zambezi”