UNM student Kamilla Lee Venner recently received a fellowship for her dissertation, which examines the relationship between Mission Indians and Anglo-American culture and how it relates to drinking patterns.
Venner, a clinical psychology doctoral student at UNM, is one of 132 minority scholars to receive the 2001 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship from the National Research Council, which seeks to increase the presence of underrepresented minority groups in college and university faculties nationwide.
More than 200 renowned scholars in the sciences and humanities selected the award winners from about 1,160 applicants based on merit and promise for future achievement, according to a recent statement.
Venner said the application process was long, involved a lot of writing and the evaluation panels were interested in projects with detailed scientific merit.
“I was pretty ecstatic,” she said. “I was very happy because it’s a competitive award and so I was very honored to receive it.”
Venner, an Athabascan Indian from Anchorage, Alaska, did her undergraduate work at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. She does research at UNM’s Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addiction in Albuquerque.
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She said rather than propagating stereotypes of American Indians, some of her research examines populations of people who have never started drinking and how their cultural identification helped to maintain abstinence.
Venner also is applying to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for a five-year training grant for researchers.
“This project will focus on Native Americans who have overcome problems with alcohol addiction,” she said.
Venner said one reason she came to New Mexico was because of the faculty at UNM.
“I could work with William Miller as my main adviser and he’s very devoted to training students,” she said.
Miller, co-director of the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addiction, said working with Venner during her years in the clinical psychology doctoral program has been a pleasure and that he is proud that she was chosen as a fellow.
“She’s a bright, creative, culturally-sensitive person who is already contributing important research in the addiction field,” he said. “Her work is going to help us understand better the unique aspects of how alcohol problems emerge among Native American peoples and, perhaps more importantly, how they are successfully overcome.”
Venner said another reason she chose New Mexico was that Native American Indian tribes in the state are similar to her Athabascan Indian lineage.
“We’re related to the Navajo and the Apache so it’s kind of fun to be down here, and I did my master’s work with the Navajo sample,” Venner said.
She majored in psychology at the small liberal arts college in Washington and said she has always been curious about human behavior.
“I suppose I’ve always been interested in people and why people do what they do, and probably my two main interests at that stage in undergrad work were addictions and marriage and divorce,” she said.
Venner said she enjoyed being a teacher, particularly the aspect of getting people excited about psychology.
“I suppose I haven’t really narrowed my own options but research will definitely be a part of it, whether I become part of a faculty or not,” she said. “I also enjoy teaching and I do enjoy the clinical work as well, but I guess right now I’m thinking probably research with a research center like CASAA or maybe a university-based hospital.”
