John Phillips
After winning the Southwest Regional Improv Tournament last November, John Phillips and five other University of Houston Theater majors competed as the improv troupe Scatter! in their first appearance at the national improv tournament this February. Through Scatter! Phillips has been a part of “some of the most liberating theatrical work I have ever done,” he said.
Scatter! specializes in the sometimes less-comedic “long form” improv, in which “you have to make the quick decisions and associations of short form, but you then have to sustain those choices with believability and quality for about five times longer,” said Phillips. “I think our biggest advantage is that we are six actors improvising, not six comedians improvising.” Of course, nothing great can really happen without his outstanding team of actors: Roland Ruiz, Jared Doreck, Matt Lusk, Caleb George, and Adam Sowers.
Phillips will graduate this spring with a B.A. in Political Science, and wrote an original play, The Philadelphia Connection, as his senior thesis. The play had a formal reading in The Honors College Commons in December. Written over his four years in The Honors College under the particular influences of professors John Harvey, William Monroe, and Andy Little, the play helped Phillips better understand both tragedy and theatricality in general.
In both his Honors College classes and onstage in improv, the ability to think flexibly and make rapid connections is essential. In both areas, “you improvise and you have to immediately connect things,” said Phillips. “The more you read, the more you soak in, the more full your improv ‘rolodex’ becomes. It’s all about making those instant connections—a lot like a Human Sit paper, if you will.”
Mariana Guerrero
Mariana Guerrero (’09) has received the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to attend Université Paris Sud 11 in pursuit of a Master’s of Public Health (M.P.H.). The scholarship allows students to study abroad for a year to serve as goodwill ambassadors while preparing to tackle important global issues.
Guerrero, who begins her Rotary Scholarship in October 2010, was introduced to her current field through a course in The Honors College’s Medicine & Society Program. “During my junior year, I took an Honors College colloquium class taught by Dr. Dacso called Experiencing the Future of Health,” she recalled. “In Dr. Dasco’s class, I learned about community health care and international medical aid, and I quickly realized that that is where my passion lies.”
After earning her M.P.H., Guerrero plans to return to America to study medicine, eventually using her expertise in public health to work for Doctors Without Borders in developing countries. With undergraduate degrees in Biology and French, Guerrero was a strong candidate for the scholarship, which required her to compose three essays in French and undergo an interview with the scholarship committee. Thanks to her wide interests in social and scientific issues—which were encouraged by the variety of ideas and people she encountered in The Honors College—she proved successful.
“The Honors College helped me meet interesting and intellectual people, both students and professors, with whom I could share my passion for learning and develop my knowledge and ideas,” Guerrero said.
