Alumni Success Stories

Sociology and Anthropology

Cristina Oria-Loureiro ’15

Salve Regina's sociology and anthropology program allowed Oria-Loureiro to pursue her interests in cultural resource management. While an undergraduate, she engaged in field research in South Carolina and Rhode Island and participated in a five-week bio-archaeological field school in Cobh, Ireland, that focused on understanding disease and mortality among inmates of a 19th century prison.

Oria-Loureiro recently earned a master's degree in anthropology from Brandeis University. Through the program, she was able to participate in a bio-archaeological field school in Huari, Peru, where she helped excavate a potential ritual complex at one research site and documented and sorted skeletal remains at another.

At Salve Regina, I developed meaningful and lasting relationships with my professors, and I was able to acquire a foundation in archaeology by taking courses in cultural and historic preservation. The program promotes interdisciplinary learning and has many opportunities for acquiring hands-on, practical skills outside of the traditional classroom, both of which are important in the field of anthropology.

Jenna Stanley ’15

Stanley is a project manager at Family Service of Rhode Island, where she works with the agency’s early childhood and community building programs..

After graduating from Salve Regina, Stanley earned a master's degree in public health from Boston University. In the program, she was tasked with building a comprehensive skill set to improve the health of not just women and infants, but any group that faces challenges that are unique to its particular situation – challenges that affect the health outcomes for members of a community.

Public health requires not only a qualitative understanding of people, their behaviors, roles and identities, but also an appreciation for quantitative analysis. Negotiation between the two is a critical skill. Salve’s sociology and anthropology major primed me to be able to effectively communicate with a clinician or laboratory researcher one moment, and a community health worker the next, while maintaining a focus on a project’s ultimate objectives.

Jacob Weinshank ’15

Weinshank earned a master's degree in anthropology and environmental policy at the University of Maine, where he researched the anthropology of climate change in an effort to determine its impacts on coupled human and natural systems. By concentrating on the human dimension of climate change and how its ideological conceptualization alters governmental and international policy development, his goal was to foster adaptive solutions for the future.

He also studied traditional environmental knowledge in Polynesia and Micronesia with the goal of cultivating adaptation and mitigation policy solutions by synthesizing local and modern climate science. His studies illuminated the unique environmental perspective of indigenous people, thus enhancing global climate change knowledge.

I received an outstanding foundational background in the tenets of anthropology while at Salve. The program provided a global perspective that opened my eyes to a variety of global, social and environmental issues, allowing me to formulate unique and consequential research in preparation for graduate school. The courses challenged me intellectually through thoughtful classroom discussions led by well-informed and passionate professors.

Jeremy Wheatley ’13

Wheatley coordinates the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his M.A. in Near Eastern studies from New York University’s Hagop Kavorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies.

During his time at the Kevorkian Center, Wheatley studied the relationship between visual media and state power, examining the ways the Islamic State’s media replicates, and often mimics methods used by the West. His master’s thesis examined the political potential of Snapchat and Twitter in the post-Arab Spring Middle East.

Wheatley also worked as an intern at PAX for Peace, where he conducted human rights advocacy targeted at the United Nations on issues ranging from the use of cluster munitions and white phosphorus to the ongoing humanitarian and refugee crises in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. While engaged in an intensive study of Arabic at the Sijal Institute of Arabic Language and Culture in Amman, Jordan in 2015, he visited the north and south of Jordan, spending nights in Wadi Rum with Bedouins and exploring the country’s historical offerings.