Two Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity stu­dents and a recent alum­nus are spend­ing the sum­mer in Nicaragua and Brazil pur­su­ing new and cre­ative ideas for pro­mot­ing peace through grants from the Davis Projects for Peace. The pro­gram awarded more than $1 mil­lion to stu­dents from uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try to pur­sue inter­na­tional endeav­ors dur­ing sum­mer 2012.

Luciana Chamorro, a recent grad­u­ate of the Class of 2012 and a native of Nicaragua, received a $10,000 grant to help mem­bers of the com­mu­nity of Mata­galpa tell their sto­ries of the 1980s civil war through the project “Sto­ries of the Civil War: Empow­er­ing a Gen­er­a­tion Through Com­mu­nity Film­mak­ing.” High school and col­lege stu­dents, video artists, schol­ars and the broader pop­u­la­tion will col­lab­o­rate in a work­shop to pro­duce a video doc­u­men­tary, Chamorro said.

“The per­sonal nar­ra­tives of the war will col­lec­tively pro­vide a view of the recent local his­tory of Mata­galpa, with the premise that under­stand­ing the past is empow­er­ing and gives a com­mu­nity the tools to think about their present and reimag­ine their future,” Chamorro said. She hopes that such a project will help “rec­og­nize in the past the seeds of our cur­rent polit­i­cal and social issues, and use this under­stand­ing to build a more just and peace­ful future for Nicaragua.”

The team of Court­ney Crum­pler and Sarah Simon, both mem­bers of the Class of 2013, were awarded $10,000 to con­front issues of health, nutri­tion and vio­lence by mobi­liz­ing an under­priv­i­leged com­mu­nity, known as a favela, in Rio de Janeiro to build sus­tain­able rooftop gar­dens. Their project, “Cul­ti­vat­ing Restora­tive Spaces: Improv­ing Health and Reduc­ing Vio­lence Through Urban Gar­dens,” aims to bring youth and their fam­i­lies together while learn­ing about food through sus­tain­able gardening.

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The annual Asso­ci­a­tion of Prince­ton Grad­u­ate Alumni (APGA) Teach­ing Awards are spon­sored by grad­u­ate alumni and are selected by Dean of the Grad­u­ate School William Rus­sel.  All will be hon­ored at the APGA’s Trib­ute to Teach­ing Recep­tion on Sat­ur­day, June 2. Each win­ner will receive $1,000.

Iwa Nawrocki received her joint bachelor’s degree in his­tory and phi­los­o­phy from McGill Uni­ver­sity in 2007 before com­ing to Prince­ton to study global and transna­tional his­tory, with a focus on mod­ern Latin Amer­ica and East­ern Europe. Nawrocki is being hon­ored for her assis­tance in teach­ing “A His­tory of the World Since 1300″ under the guid­ance of Jeremy Adel­man, the Wal­ter Samuel Car­pen­ter III Pro­fes­sor in Span­ish Civ­i­liza­tion and Cul­ture and pro­fes­sor of his­tory. In nom­i­nat­ing Nawrocki, Adel­man noted her abil­ity to engage the wide vari­ety of stu­dents enrolled in the expan­sive course. “Get­ting stu­dents moti­vated and involved requires energy, devo­tion and an abil­ity to range widely with­out being super­fi­cial. Iwa has all three,” Adel­man wrote. He com­mented on the excep­tion­ally high course eval­u­a­tions and com­pli­ments Nawrocki received from her stu­dents, writ­ing, “Con­sider the key­words of her stu­dents: engag­ing, com­fort­able, thought­ful, clar­i­fy­ing, kind, help­ful, encour­ag­ing. … Exactly the vocab­u­lary one wants to see in one’s teach­ing assis­tant, Iwa deliv­ers.” One stu­dent, describ­ing her ded­i­ca­tion to teach­ing, wrote that Nawrocki “let me know when my ini­tial work was not up to par, and she showed me what she expected of me in her class. Through her teach­ing I learned how to write an A-level his­tory paper, and I feel very pre­pared for any his­tory class to come.” Nawrocki expects to com­plete her Ph.D. in 2015.

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