Elizabeth/Muriel's Homepage

...identity under construction

• experienceing the warm hospitatlity (and amazing food) of the Turks
• witnessing textile smuggleing into Romania
• seeing the President of Ghana begin his state visit to Hungary
• listening to local folk lore and taking in local fine art in Prague
• testing out my Afrkaans on the Dutch
• breathing in the beautiful air of the Belgium farmland
• meeting the French Foreign Legion durring their training exercises in Provence
• helping a child practice her English lesson in Switzerland
• climbing up the steep hill to a fortress, at night, in the rain, in Germany
• visiting the sights of the Sound of Music with a hillareous guide in Austria
• staying with nuns in Italy
• discussing politics with a Greek friend
• makeing amazing friends along the way

From July 1997-June 1998 I served as an AmeriCorps Volunteer. I was posted at the Maryland Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention as the Volunteer Coordinator for the state-wide HotSpot Communities Initiative. For more information about what I did there, please see my resume.

I am a recent graduate of The Johns Hopkins University . I spent my undergraduate days studying International Relations (concentrating on South African Studies) which took up alot of my time. But on those days when I was not studying, I was involved with the university's largest drama group, The Barnstormers. Formerly as the Vice-President in charge of Profesional Productions, I Produced the two mainstages, I Hate Hamlet and Sweeney Todd. They were great. The first show I ever had the opportunity to produce was Cabaret, the Barnstormers Mainstage Musical for Spring 1994. In fall of 1995, I directed (with my sophomore year roooommmmaaatttte, Aime Poldmae), The Fifteen Minute Hamlet by Tom Stoppard. It is was really cool! 21 Freshman in tights, lots of fun!!
Senior year I was secretary for the organization, funny since I can't spell. I was also in a play called Ring Around the Moon. I played an old woman in a wheelchair who talked a whole lot... if you ever read the script I was Madam Desmortes.
If I wasn't doing theater, I was involved in some other campus activities or working... here are a few of the things that kept me busy:

• The Center for Language and Speech Processing I started my work study job at CLSP in 1994 when it was the Center for Speech Processing, my boss Kimberly and I worked out of a tiny little office. Since then the center has grown into major speech research center hosting an international summer workshop where cool engineers from all the corners of the earth come to solve some of the problems of speech recognition. I did a variety of different things at the center including conference planning, cookie arranging, computer training and installation and web page design and maintenance. This was such a marvellous job that I still visit on a regular basis (sometimes more regularly then when i was working there ;).
• The JHU Faculty/Student Interaction Program This is a great program (especially since I was a board member of it) which allows faculty and students a chance to interact in a non-academic environment.(ok lame discription, read the page) Patrice Mason, the coordinator of FSI, is a really cool person who I enjoyed working with and hope never to loose touch with!
• The Office of Undergraduate Admissions I not only was skilled in walking backwords (in otherwords, a tour guide), I was an admissions representative. The Admissions Representative Program is a marvellous program in which Hopkins undergrads help the admissions office by conducting interviews and pannel discussions. I loved working at the admissions office because everyone was so friendly and fun.

• Burak "babe" Onal
• Mark "the laptop still doesn't print" Chang
  
• Mike "We love you Elizabeth" Harman
• Dan "why is the system not working???" Yochelson
• Lisa "I don't understand these engineers" Yoder
• John "Milton-Bradley" Raczek