Recent Graduates in Anthropology

The goal of our graduate program is to prepare students for the next level. What that next level is depends on the student, what their goals were, and how they designed their graduate program. One of the strengths of our program is that it allows students to tailor their course-work, internships, fellowships, field experiences, and theses topics to place them where they want to go. As you can see below, some in the Professional Archaeology track gained immediate employment in the CRM industry while others are continuing their education by entering doctoral programs in a variety of first-rate institutions.

Undergraduate Students

Brad Kindler

BA Anthropology, Assistant Director for Community CROPS (Combining Resources, Opportunities and People for Sustainability). CROPS works on a variety of projects to help immigrants and refugees begin farming in the Southeast Nebraska area. Brad works with all aspects of the project, including the gardens and farms. He also works with young people as part of the Urban Youth Agricultural Initiative.

Krystal Texiera

will graduate from UNL in spring 2007 with a BA in anthropology and has been accepted into the MA program in forensic anthropology at Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas for fall 2007.

Jenny McCollough

graduated with a B.A. in anthropology from UNL in December 2006. She has just completed her first semester in the Museum Studies Program, Anthropology Track, at Kansas University in Lawrence, Kansas in spring 2007. She hopes to add the History Track, having cultivated her interests in historical archaeology at UNL. In addition, Jenny has been hired as the Archivist at the Clinton Lake Museum at Baker University in Baldwin, Kansas. She is happy to talk to other UNL students about KU's museum studies program.

Emily Sorrell

graduated in the fall of 2006 with a BA in anthropology and a minor in Spanish. She was admitted to the University of Nebraska Medical Center (Omaha) where in the fall of 2007 she will pursue her medical degree along with a masters of public health (the latter to satisfy her love of anthropology).

Ryan Schacht

graduated from UNL in spring 2006 with a BS degree, majoring in Anthropology and minoring in biological sciences and psychology. Ryan is now a Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology at University of California at Davis and will conduct field work in Guyana on attractiveness.

Rachel Dellevechio

graduated in spring 2006 with an BA in anthropology and has been accepted into the master's program in forensic anthropology at Witchita State University for fall 2007.

Stephanie Beran

graduated in spring 2006 with a BA in anthropology and will enter law school in fall 2007. She's been admitted to three separate programs that include training in human rights and indigenous legal issues.

Graduate Students

Michaela S. Clemens

graduated with an M.A. in the spring of 2007. Thesis: Long-Term Refugees and Short-Sighted Health Strategies. She is currently the Project Director for the Tema Eye Survey (TES) in Tema, Ghana. TES is an epidemiological study examining the prevalence of eye diseases in this region of West Africa. The project is funded by International Aid and the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute of the University of Miami.

Brennan Dolan

is a summer 2007 graduate who received a Masters degree from the Professional Archaeology program. His thesis is titled Exploring Okoboji Oneota: Analysis and Regional Comparison of Faunal Data from Gillett Grove (13CY2), Clay County, Iowa. He is an archaeologist for the Midwest office of the Louis Berger Group, Inc., located in Marion, Iowa. He is in charge of overseeing archaeological projects. He is responsible for supervising archaeological survey and site evaluation, including background research, field investigation, materials analysis, and preparation of written reports. His professional interests include faunal analysis (especially diversity studies), ceremony, and historic preservation awareness.

Ben Purzycki

graduated with an MA in the summer of 2006 and now is in the doctoral program at the University of Connecticut where he studies the evolutionary psychology of religion and the cultural evolution of mythical ideas. He is also conducting research in Denmark as part of a six-country research team on violence, deterrence, and human rights.

Carl McCabe

anthropology doctoral program (behavioral ecology), University of California-Davis. Thesis: Ye'kwana Meal Sharing (August 2004). Carl received a graduate teaching fellowship and has entered one of the top ecological and behavioral ecological programs in the country. He began by doing field work with Bruce Winterhalder on pinyon nut harvesting strategies of Native Americans. Currently, he is preparing to travel to China on a Wenner Gren grant to test some ideas in experimental economics among vendors in city markets. He just published part of his UN-L thesis in with his Nebraska thesis advisor: Hames, R. and C. McCabe "Meal Sharing among the Ye'kwana" Human Nature 18 (1):1-22 (2007).

Kyle Gibson

Graduated with an M.A. in 2004 (thesis: Relatedness and Investment in Adoptive Households). He is currently working on his Ph.D. in human evolutionary ecology at the University of Utah. His dissertation research is on suicide terrorism and the motivations people have in volunteering for suicide missions. Kristen Hawkes (chair), Henry Harpending, Elizabeth Cashdan and Doug Jones sit on his committee. He currently teaches a class called Human Universals at the University of Utah.

Carl Drexler

anthropology doctoral program (archaeology) University of Arkansas. Thesis: Identifying Culturally-Based Variability in Artillery Ammunition Fragments Recovered from the Battlefield of Pea Ridge, Arkansas. He was awarded a distinguished doctoral fellowship from the graduate college as well as a GTA position. He is currently working on a number of Civil War era sites in northwest Arkansas and southeast Missouri. These sites will provide the core for his dissertation, which employs a landscape approach to the archaeological study of warfare. He hopes to examine this question with regards to both regular warfare (carried out with the sanction of governments), and irregular/guerilla warfare.

Alicia Coles

anthropology doctoral program (underwater archaeology) University of Rhode Island. Thesis: Fort William in Context: Independent Post Versus Outstructure of Fort Union (August 2004). There she is working with Robert Ballard, the underwater explorer who discovered the Titanic. Her activities and multidisciplinary doctoral program combining archaeology and oceanography are highlighted here in MSNBC.

Damita Hiemstra

Staff Archaeologist, Metcalf Archaeological Consultants, Inc. Bismarck, ND. Thesis: Pull of the Hills? : An Examination of Prehistoric Land Use on the Great Plains, Along the Southern Margin of the South Dakota Black Hills (Professional Archaeology MA December 2003). Damita is managing a variety of archaeological projects for Metcalf Archaeological Consultants, Inc. in their Bismarck, North Dakota office.

Clea Koff, M.A., 2000

Clea recently published The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist' Search for Truth in the Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. Her work was profiled 1 May in the New York Times and she is doing a book tour through her publisher Random House. Click here to visit Clea's homepage http://thebonewoman.com/ and here http://www.randomhouse.com/ for a synopsis of her work at the Random House web site.

Kirby Moss, M.A., 1997

Kirby received his doctorate at the University of Texas in 2001 as is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Colorado at Boulder. He just published The Color of Class: Poor Whites and the Paradox of Privilege through the University of Pennsylvania Press. His homepage is http://www.colorado.edu/journalism/faculty/bios/moss.html.