Congratulations to Susanne Gabrielsen, UWC Red Cross Nordic alumna(Norway NC), for being awarded her doctorate by the University of Minnesota following the submission of her theses: ‘Longitudinal Intergroup Contact Model Comparison at the Multicultural High School UWC RCN’. Susanne concluded her thesis with the following statement:
RCN puts young men and women who might otherwise never meet in contact, knowing that conflict will arise, and guides its students through them. The college becomes a steady presence during the students’ last two adolescent years, fraught with emotion, growth, and crystallization of values. At RCN, students get a taste of the conflicts and war that ravage the world, but RCN also provides a glimpse of peace to students who have never before experienced it. The students who leave RCN will likely never unlearn how to navigate intergroup contact, and if they are anything like the students surveyed and interviewed here, they will go into the world hoping to use what they learned from their UWC experience to create peace and a sustainable future.
Susanne wrote to say how grateful she is for the access to RCN students, and professional and personal support that she received. As she says, ‘I hope I have in some small way given back to the school to which I owe so much’.
