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Yale University
A resident of Amenia, New York, Shantz-Dunn, who has a 3.4 average in the rare double major of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology along with Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, has been a steadying force for the Yale women's hockey team. A letterwinner since her freshman year, she was the team's Most Improved Player as a freshman team captain the past two seasons. She has also served a leadership role on campus leading six-day hiking trips with groups of 10-12 freshmen. These trips are designed to help first-year Yale students adjust to college.
Her community involvement began her freshman season of 1996 when she served on the Community Outreach Committee. This committee is designed to provide community service opportunities for athletes. Later, she servered as the women's ice hockey team's representative in Youth Days. She has also visited children in local hospitals, has mentored a middle school girl, and has worked with the New Haven children in Yale-sponsored athletic camps. In addition, she has served as an assistant to a second grade bilingual class at a New Haven public elementary school.
However, she has not limited her community involvement just to New Haven and her time at Yale University. During the summer of 1997, she worked in a family-based program in Oak Park, Illinois. The program served families who have abused and/or neglected their children. Then, during her spring break last year, she worked for Habitat for Humanity constructing houses as part of the Collegiate Challenge. Finally, last summer, she worked on a malaria project in a small village in Lima, Peru. While there, she also volunteered for a medical mission.
In his letter nomimating Shantz-Dunn for the Humanitarian Award, Yale women's hockey coach John Marchetti wrote:
She has exhibited all the qualities that a coach would want in a captain: leadership, compassion, vision, and understanding. She is a class act on this campus; the consummate student/athlete. Juliana is a sensitive, giving young woman." |
