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2011 Kaplan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellows

Dwight Bowman

Professor of Parasitology, Veterinary Medicine

Dwight Bowman’s project, a Peer-Mentored Service-Learning Wellness Program for Pets of the Underprivileged in New York City, is to extend the current Ithaca Southside Healthy Pet Clinic program by taking the clinic to New York City, where it will serve the underprivileged of the local community. The clinic trains early veterinary students, and allows the students to have access to animals for history taking and physical examination practice early in their veterinary training. The clinic has been a success, and because of the need to train more students and to improve the recognition of the value of the program, it is time for it to expand. The reasons for choosing NYC are: to provide an opportunity to work with alumni, to began an interaction with the NYC community, to serve the public in an area of great need, and to provide increased exposure with the goal of obtaining additional program support.


Jack Elliott

Human Ecology

The Community Building through Community Buildings: Empowerment Through Design project addresses the extreme public facility needs of a squatter community known as Veron, populated primarily by displaced Haitians who work near the eco-tourist resort of Punta Cana. Professor Jack Elliott and students from a variety of disciplines will engage in a series of design/build projects conducted over the next five years utilizing some new technologies with vernacular materials that were developed and tested earlier this year by a group of undergraduate researchers under Professor Elliott’s direction. In order to ensure its successful adoption and integration into the Dominican setting, research will be undertaken into the local social constructions of space, both domestic and urban, to help understand the cultural setting into which this intervention will be placed. Initially, this project will be designing and constructing an outdoor assembly space for an AIDS clinic but other projects would follow, such as additional classroom space for the Veron Primary School, bus shelters, and a small community center.