Fulbright Fellow Matt Murrill ’08 returns to campus to discuss health and human rights

August 13, 2010
Contact: Chloe Kennedy, News and New Media Writer
865.981.8209; chloe.kennedy@maryvillecollege.edu

Maryville College alumnus Matt Murrill, who recently completed a Fulbright-Nehru fellowship in Kolkata, India, will return to campus to talk about his experience studying groundwater arsenic contamination in Eastern India over the past year.

Murrill’s lecture will be presented on Aug. 31 at 7:30 p.m. in the Harold and Jean Lambert Recital Hall of the Clayton Center for the Arts. It is the first event in this year’s College-sponsored Community Conversations Series, which will focus on the theme of “human rights.”

Murrill, who graduated summa cum laude in 2008, received a Fulbright-Nehru fellowship to spend a year examining the problem of groundwater arsenic contamination in Eastern India with the School of Environmental Studies at Jadavpur University. During this experience, he also worked with the non-government organization Calcutta Kids, which is committed to the empowerment of women and children living in slums in and around Kolkata through community-based programs seeking to improve maternal and child health.

Murrill will discuss the integrated framework of health and human rights, drawing from the evolution of his own perspective informed by experiences with institutions striving to ensure the provision of safe drinking water and healthcare to both rural and urban communities in the region of Bengal.

Murrill’s lecture will also be part of the College’s Science Literacy Seminar Series, which Murrill co-founded. The series is designed to convey such topics to the general public in order to provide a brief overview of the subject matter and quell the illusion that science is inaccessible to non-scientists.

“Because he was a co-founder of the Science Literacy Seminar Series, which focuses on interdisciplinary and social implications of science and technology, it is especially fitting to have Matt return to the College to discuss how his interests in chemistry and medicine are being applied to expand and protect human rights,” said Dr. Angelia Gibson, assistant professor of chemistry and chair of the Community Conversations committee.

Community Conversations is an annual lecture series conducted to facilitate conversations and discussions between members of the entire Maryville College community, citizens of Blount County and surrounding areas, College alumni and prospective students.

 “The topic of human rights is very broad, but we have tried to plan events that cover a diverse range of global human rights issues,” Gibson said. “The year-long Community Conversations series will feature a number of important human rights debates from personal, political and religious freedoms to distribution of natural resources and access to healthcare, presented in a variety of forums.”

On Sept. 15, Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist who was falsely accused of espionage and imprisoned for 100 days in Iran, will speak in the Ron and Lynda Nutt Theatre of the Clayton Center for the Arts at 7:30 p.m. The event is co-sponsored by the Initiative on Vocation and the Bonner Scholar program.

Saberi’s lecture, titled “On the Streets of Tehran,” will focus on the six years she lived in Iran as a journalist and witnessed the developments leading up to the 2009 disputed Iranian election, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iranians calling for freedom and fighting for free and fair elections. The Iranian regime reacted by using deadly violence to stop to the protests, which sparked outrage among its citizens, as well as the international community. During her lecture, Saberi will discuss the political, cultural and historical significance of those events as they continue to develop and explain what it means for human rights and democracy, the Middle East and the world. Following the lecture, Saberi will sign copies of her book, Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran.

On Oct. 4 at 7 p.m., Community Conversations will sponsor a showing of the critically acclaimed film “Sand and Sorrow,” which explores the human rights tragedies in Darfur, Sudan. The film will be shown in Lawson Auditorium, and Dr. Scott Brunger, professor of economics, will moderate the discussion.

The series will continue in the spring with events that will focus on the rights of children, international perspectives on religious freedoms, and the use of music as an advocacy and protest medium in human rights debates.

Maryville College is ideally situated in Maryville, Tenn., between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Knoxville, the state‘s third largest city. Founded in 1819, it is the 12th oldest institution of higher learning in the South and maintains an affiliation with the Presbyterian Church (USA). Known for its academic rigor and its focus on the liberal arts, Maryville is where students come to stretch their minds, stretch themselves and learn how to make a difference in the world. Total enrollment for the fall 2011 semester was 1,078.