Global Thinker

For Kelsey Noonan ’08, working with Iraqi refugees as a senior fellow has shaped career goals.

KELSEY NOONAN GRADUATES THIS SPRING BEHIND MOST OF HER CLASS. The government major is far from a slacker, however. Off campus almost as much as on, she has built her college education around an impressive international resume.

Noonan’s interest in human rights was kindled as a volunteer at a refugee center on the U.S./Canadian border, near her Buffalo, New York, home. Following study abroad programs in Fez, Morocco, and Toulouse, France, Noonan spent fall 2007 in Geneva, interning at the Human Rights Council of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. Facilitating diplomatic meetings left her eager to return to direct services. “I was really frustrated by how the decisions made were so far removed from the field,” she says.

She spent two terms of her 2007-08 academic year aiding Iraqi refugees with Mercy Corps in amman, Jordan. “the Iraqis have been kind of on their own,” says Noonan. “In Jordan they are spread out, living on their savings,” she says. Identifying a lack of education as a major problem for refugee children, Noonan helped design and write grant applications for an outreach project. Her year of classical Arabic proved only small help in navigating the language’s numerous dialects. “the topics I know well I can speak well, but you ask me to go milk the sheep and I’ve got no idea what to do,” she says.

Although she left Jordan with an enervating parasitic infection, she also had a research idea: a meta-analysis of the factors predicting where refugees eventually settle. “refugee policy is predicated on the assumption that refugees go home after a crisis, but in reality this is not the case,” explains Noonan, who received a senior fellowship to pursue the study. one of 10 students selected for the College’s annual awards funded by Gerry Kaminski ’61 on the basis of project quality and faculty support, Noonan received $9,500 that enabled her to forgo fulfillment of departmental major requirements and spend three terms pursuing her research. “I feel so fortunate to have received a senior fellowship,” she says. “It allowed me to gain experience at 21 that most people don’t have the opportunity to pursue until mid-career.”

Using data from the U.N. library, she is analyzing conflicts in which more than 100,000 refugees were displaced in order to provide a picture of how the type of conflict instigating refugeeism and the types of assistance provided, among other variables, influence eventual resettlement.

Since returning to campus last fall the avid climber and Dartmouth Mountaineering Club member has carved out time for ice climbing (in Colorado), EMT certification and the Ceili Irish Dancers, a group she started her sophomore year. Noonan also has been working with the New England Center for Emergency Preparedness (NECEP), an organization run by Dartmouth Medical School and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center aimed at coordinating emergency response throughout northern New England. Her projects include grant writing and helping first responders in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine build parallel emergency response systems. “I’m helping prepare for a crisis before it happens, which has been really interesting for me because I’ve worked so much with disasters after the fact,” she says.

Noonan plans to work at NECEP through october. after that, she can’t wait to return to fieldwork. “I went back to the Middle East in March to follow up on my research, and I haven’t felt so myself in a long time,” she says. she also found the Iraqi refugee situation encouraging. “things have changed a bit. It’s much calmer, and resettlement is happening in greater numbers,” she says. Noonan hopes to see continued improvement when she next returns to the Middle East.

Taking to the Hills Noonan spent two terms in Amman, Jordan, helping Iraqi refugees and getting to know the

LAUREN ZERANSKI is studying clinical psychology in Amherst, Massachusetts.