Each year The University Record profiles several graduating seniors who highlight the range of experiences and people who attend U-M.
Uncovering Siberian mammoth bones outside the comfort zone
Senior Chris Whalen had already decided to pursue a career in paleontology but wasn’t sure how he would handle long stretches of fieldwork in remote locations. So he tested his limits by spending a month in Siberia with his professor and several other U-M students, searching for woolly mammoth bones on the windswept tundra. Another senior, Caleb Fogel, was one of four U-M students on that trip in August 2012, led by U-M paleontologist Daniel Fisher. Fogel came away knowing that field work — including occasional forays into places that force him out his comfort zone — will be a central part of his life.
LSA senior has recipe to healthier diet
Food is at the center of Sepideh Ashrafzadeh’s life. As a teenager she watched her mother reduce fat, salt and sugar in her family’s traditional Persian recipes and saw her grandfather’s health improve. Impressed with the results, she collaborated with her mother and sister to revise 40 recipes and in 2012 published them as a cookbook, “Diet for the Educated,” in her native Iran.
Ford School senior values ‘reward’ of Michigan experience
As Zouheir Al Ghreiwati prepares to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in public policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, he pinpoints what drew him to Michigan. There were two things, really: being able to switch majors and the tsunami of team spirit.
