2022-2023 Awards
We are announcing the recipients of the Aaron and Sylvia Wechter Family Excellence Fund for the cycle 2022-2023. Chavah Schwartz and Natalia Soriano Moreno presented that are clearly deserving of this honor.
Chavah Schwartz is already making important contributions to the field of Jewish Studies. She has been teaching Introduction to Judaism since 2015 for the Religious Studies program. Chavah was awarded the Wechter Fund so she can re-establish the Jewish Studies program at the University of Texas at El Paso. The program was paused after its former director, Dr. Ezra Cappell, accepted a position at the College of Charleston in 2018. Chavah will coordinate the program starting in the Fall 2023 with the aim to re-establish the minor in Jewish Studies at UTEP. In addition, she will use the Wechter fund to complete her dissertation and attain a doctoral degree in Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas. As she stated in her proposal, her work seeks to “capture a sense of community that has been overlooked in much recent ethical thought and practice, and it presents Judaism as a topic worthy of academic study within the field of contemporary ecology and environmentalism.” She looks forward to present the results of her research to a diverse audience in El Paso.
Natalia Soriano Moreno, is a Creative Writing student working towards the completion of the MFA program at UTEP. She is receiving the Aaron and Sylvia Wechter Family Excellence Fund, to conduct seven creative writing workshops “that promote the writing of testimonial texts” that reflect the diverse experiences of the El Paso Jewish communities. According to Natalia, “the idea is to open a space in which the participants can write their experiences” building a collective story that will preserve the uniqueness of each person’s testimony.” Natalia’s project includes the creation of a digital literary journal which will link the creative testimonies to a map of El Paso “in which the memories of each participant will be located to think about the relationship between memory and territory.” As is the case of Chavah Schwartz, Natalia Soriano Moreno will present the results of the workshops with the community in at least one event, open to the public.
The College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso appreciates the support provided by the Aaron and Sylvia Wechter Family Excellence Fund to the academic and creative work of Chavah Schwartz and Natalia Soriano Moreno..
