After final review of applications and approval from the SGA Senate, the Academic Affairs committee has selected the fall semester’s Richard Frank Grant recipients

              The chosen grant recipients are biology senior Gabriela Estrada, theater senior Adrienne Burns and music industry senior Blake Durham. Committee chairwoman and political science senior, LeeAnn Moss, and vice chairman and history sophomore, Garrett Fontenot, both agree that their projects were good projects.

The Richard Frank grant awards money to students who need financial support to conduct scholarly research and independent projects.  This semester, SGA allocated $10,000 to recipients as opposed to the usual $5,000 per semester. 

              According to Moss, the projects were creative and innovative and will contribute to Loyola and the New Orleans community. As for Fontenot, he said he was “genuinely impressed with the projects” and said he’s eager to see the recipients carry out their respective projects.

              Estrada, whose project SGA funded the most money to roughly $4,800, involves a study of “kissing bugs,” which are believed to be the cause Chagas Disease.

Burns’s project is to stage a performance of “The Municipal Abbatoir,” written by Tennessee Williams, that will be showcased in this year’s Loyola One-Act Festival and possibly entered in the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival.

Durham plans to produce an experimental piece of electronic music and a behavioral study of people’s reaction to the piece. The appropriately named “4:37 PM 11/15/09” project will begin at that specific time and date and end 120 days later.

Burns and Durham received a little more than $2,000 each. 

              Past recipients have used the grant to organize workshops and fulfill independent projects comprising various fields and subjects. Music performance senior, Persis Randolph, was a grant recipient and awarded $2,000 her sophomore year to start a class to teach oboe players how to make reeds for their instruments.

She spent the money to purchase “general supplies like cane to make the reeds, knives, thread, corks, a gouger, a shaper and shaper tips among a few other things,” she said. Since her initial proposal in 2007, the classes have continued.

“I find the classes to be very helpful, we all still attend, and the supplies we needed we could not have done without,” Randolph said.

              Monique Verdin, communications junior was a 2008 recipient of the Richard Frank Grant and also awarded $2,000 to work on project called the “LA Identite Project.” As a continuation of a project she started ten years ago, Verdin photographed Native Americans, mainly relatives, living “in the decaying wetlands of coastal South Louisiana.” 

According to Verdin, she said the project was personal and allowed her to explore the technical aspect of photography and gain an understanding of her place and culture.  As for the work she produced for the project, she said, “I treasure those images for they are relics of my family history, documenting a South Louisiana life that has since passed.”

Charmaine Jackson can be reached at [email protected]