Summer 2014

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Catherine Althaus. Photo by Mary Henebry.

Close to the Bone: Catherine Althaus

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Senior Standouts

Mental Health Advocate: Rebecca Abara

Close to the Bone: Catherine Althaus

Pop Culture Commentator: Gabe Bergado

Trumpeting His Success: Daniel Flores

Conversation Starter: Noor Hasan

Entrepreneur Energizer: Josephine Lee

Musical Resonance: Bryce and Maris O’Tierney

Serious About Satire: Stephen Rees and Peter Stein

The Philosophy of Green: Mark Silberg

Diving Into Design: Matt Wilcox

Check out Catherine Althaus' reflections on her adventures on her "Bare Bones" blog.

Tell us what you think. E-mail comments or questions to the editors at letters@northwestern.edu.

Ever wonder about those strange designations we use throughout Northwestern to identify alumni of the various schools of the University? See the complete list.

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“People often ask me, ‘Why do you want to study the dead?’ I never would have guessed that I’d be ‘the mummy girl.’ But when you follow the trajectory of my Northwestern experience, it makes sense. I originally came in as a biology major. And then I took an anthropology course and just fell in love.
“I worked at the Field Museum for a year with the curator of biological anthropology, performing image analysis of CT scans of Peruvian mummies. That experience ultimately served as the inspiration for my Circumnavigators project.”

Catherine Althaus, a biological anthropology major from Madison, Wis., and winner of the Circumnavigators Travel-Study Grant, visited 10 countries in 11 weeks last summer to analyze differences in the display and treatment of human remains in various collections, from the British Museum’s vast collection of Egyptian mummies to the Chinchorro mummies — the oldest in the world — at the Museo Arqueológico San Miguel de Azapa in Arica, Chile. In July, Althaus will move to Ecuador, where she will spend 13 months leading community development initiatives as a program director for Manna Project International.