Daily Pilot, CA
Newport Beach & Costa Mesa
June 7 2005
Student tackles human trafficking
By Michael Miller, Daily Pilot
For most students, a Fulbright scholarship is a chance to travel
abroad for the first time. For Tatyana Martell, it’s more like a
homecoming.
Last summer, the Armenian-born UC Irvine student interned at the U.S.
Embassy in Lithuania, the country where she spent much of her
childhood. While working for the State Department, Martell read
reports about one of the worst crises facing the former Soviet Union:
human trafficking. Hearing accounts of young women being bartered and
sold in the economically depressed countries, Martell vowed to
dedicate the next phase of her life to researching — and, possibly,
fighting — the illicit trade.
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“It’s a dreadful problem, and it’s so little-talked about,” said
Martell, 30. “It affects the U.S., and it affects nearly every other
country in the world.”
Martell has an ally in her journey. This fall, the undergraduate will
travel on a Fulbright community service grant to study human
trafficking at Yaroslavl State University in Russia. In addition, she
will use part of her scholarship money to work with women and teenage
girls who are potential targets of the trade.
“A lot of the time, women think they’re going to work as nannies or
dishwashers,” Martell said. “Then, as soon as they cross the border,
their papers are taken away. They’re often beaten and abused, or
forced into sex work.”
Studying at Yaroslavl and visiting women’s shelters, Martell may pull
a number of long, lonely hours. On Monday, however, she sat among
friends as one of 16 students honored at UCI’s annual National Awards
Recognition Luncheon.
Packing the small dining room in the back of the campus University
Club were three Fulbright scholars, three Barry M. Goldwater scholars
and several candidates and winners of other awards. UCI tied its
single-year records for number of Fulbright and Goldwater winners in
2005.
“There is a palpable feeling of hope in this room,” scholarship
counselor Rebecca Harris told the crowd. “It’s wonderful to be a part
of.”
Audrey DeVore, founder of the campus Scholarship Opportunities
program, presented certificates to each of the 16 honorees present.
She noted that at least 70 UCI students had applied for scholarships
in 2004-05.
“It takes courage to apply for these awards,” DeVore said. “You know
the odds. You may do everything right and still not get it.”
Since 1990, when UCI began the Scholarship Opportunities program,
nearly 100 students have won state and national honors, including 23
Goldwater scholars, 20 Fulbright fellows and five Truman scholars.
This year, recipients’ destinations ranged from Costa Mesa to France
and Austria.
Apart from Martell, the other Fulbright winners were Catherine
Nguyen, who plans to study Vietnamese literature at the University of
Provence, and David Hallowell, who got a grant to study psychology at
the University of Vienna. Hallowell will work under the tutelage of
Alfried Längle, a protégé of existentialism pioneer Viktor Frankl.
Goldwater scholarships, which fund undergraduate work at UCI, went to
information and computer science major Arthur Asuncion Jr.,
mechanical engineering major Danielle Issa and biological science and
dance major Vicky Zhou. The second annual Merage American Dream
Fellowship went to political science major Mayte Santacruz Benavidez,
who will study law at UC Berkeley in the fall.
Biochemistry and molecular biology major Vivek Mehta won the Donald
A. Strauss Scholarship to develop a series of health seminars at the
Share Our Selves medical clinic in Costa Mesa.
Also honored at the luncheon were Brittany Schick, UCI’s first George
J. Mitchell scholar, Rotary scholars Gregoria Baranzadeh and Mukul
Kumar, Morris K. Udall honorable mention Sara Huber, Fulbright
candidates Theresa Nguyen and Kara Tanaka, National Science
Foundation honorable mention Sukant Mittal, and Jacqueline
Chattopadhyay, one of Glamour magazine’s Top Ten College Women this
year.