she plans to spend time there “as well as traveling to explore different cultures, including within the United States.” She concludes, “I believe that I will be wherever I can make a dif- ference in helping other people.”
Name/Nom/Nombres:
Kengthsagn Louis HaITI
Nationality/Nationalité/Nacionalidad:
ABUDE AL-ASAAD ’17, a Palestinian raised in a Syrian refu - gee camp, knows about real life. Today he’s an economics major who enjoys rethinking how theoretical economic models apply to the real world. He is the kind of student col- leges clamor for: critical, curious, connected, concerned, and uncannily canny. In turn, those traits helped him decide that Skidmore, where individuals are highly valued, was his col- lege of choice.
KENGTHSAGN LOUIS ’17, a psychology and business major from Haiti, came to Skidmore for the balance of a close-knit, yet globally aware and diverse community. “So far,” she says, “Skidmore has met most of my expectations and exceeded some of them. I enjoy the fact that there is always something here to satisfy my broad interests, main passions, and curiosi- ty.” The resources at Skidmore, she says, “inspire us to inspire each other on a daily basis.”
Louis recently won a $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace grant to fund her lab-science initiative in a school in Haiti. “Public schools in Haiti suffer from a severe scarcity or even absence of science laboratories,” she explains. “I have experienced the consequences of such a lack, and millions of other Hai - tian students do too.” To improve the situation, Louis has been collecting unneeded sci- ence equipment from Skidmore and other organizations to re - deploy to Haiti. “The project is super exciting,” Louis says, be- cause “hopefully it is just the start of what could transform the educational adventure for many Haitian students.” Louis acknowledges that she’s “always been passionate about psychology; however, I discov- ered my enthusiasm for business studies at Skidmore”—at first through a Skidmore SEE-Beyond
Name/Nom/Nombres:
abude al-assad palestine
Nationality/Nationalité/Nacionalidad:
internship back home that strengthened her interest in orga- nizational behavior. She worked for Fondation Toya, which seeks to empower women by supporting training, rights ad- vocacy, and entrepreneurship. Louis says, “The internship combined many of my interests, such as gender studies, cul- tural differences, government, and business strategy. After the internship, I came back to Skidmore and took a business course.”
Ultimately, Louis wants to help her “beloved country,” so
“I really appreciate my relationship with my professors,” he says. “We send each other interesting articles and book re- views, and we meet for coffee to debate big ideas and discuss current events.” He cites as his “most intellectually reward- ing college experience” an independent study with Professor Roy Rotheim exploring economic models.
Hoping to return to Palestine to help others access oppor- tunities like his, Al-Asaad comments, “I do not think I am smarter than anyone else; I was luckier.” His mission now is to express gratitude through actions, rather than words. He says, “I am committed to strengthening international under- standing as a means to achieving world peace,” which he says can only happen outside of dogma and rhetoric. So far, he’s on task, with experiences such as a summer at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, where he re- searched the history of mon- etary policy and economic thought; representing the UN Relief and Work Agency in Syria; and, on behalf of UNICEF, training Palestinian and Syrian adolescents in communication and self- awareness skills as well as HIV protection. He has even delivered a TED talk extol - ling extracurricular learning. His extraordinary life notwithstanding, Al-Asaad considers his nomination as
Outstanding Community Member at Skidmore a pretty fair description of him: “indefatigable in his drive to foster and propagate critical thought at Skidmore.” The citation refer- ences, among other achievements, his single-handed facili - tation of a community discussion with Professor Sheldon Solomon on student apathy. Plans for one on affirmative ac- tion fell through when one of the guests withdrew for fear of controversy—in contrast to Al-Asaad, who, it’s said, “ap- proaches the most incendiary topics with the kind of sober
22 SCOPE SPRING 2015
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