Danaleah Schoenfuss ’15: Hands-On Research and Beyond

After graduating in the spring of 2015, Danaleah Schoenfuss headed directly to the Institute for American Indian Studies, where she will intern prior to attending graduate school. She credits her experiences at Adelphi—classes, labs, fieldwork and clubs—for preparing her for life after college.

As a member of the Anthropology Club and Mosaic, the Adelphi University diversity club, Schoenfuss was able to pick up many valuable lessons and experiences outside of the classroom. “Anthropology Club exposed me to many different cultural experiences that I would not have had otherwise, as we went on exclusive museum trips, sampled many different ethnic foods and exchanged geeky factoids about anthropology,” Schoenfuss said. “Mosaic helped my studies in that I met a diverse array of people in a forum where we discussed how we were presenting ourselves to a larger global community.”

While keeping busy with student clubs, Schoenfuss also worked as a lab assistant on campus under the direction of Anagnostis Agelarakis, Ph.D., professor and anthropology department chair.

“He really brought me into the professional sphere, and was always a joy to work with,” Schoenfuss said. “The most rewarding aspect of being a lab assistant was knowing that I was working on a professional level with passionate, hardworking and intelligent people who all fed off of each other well and learned exponentially faster together.”

Schoenfuss participated in several research projects, all of which originated in Greece and are ongoing. She presented one such project at Adelphi’s Research Conference and at the National Conference of Undergraduate Research in Spokane, Washington.

“My favorite aspect of the research was seeing it develop over the entirety of my time at Adelphi,” Schoenfuss said. “I would see a project in the lab room, then I would see the archaeological materials being processed in Greece, then I would physically handle, analyze and write up reports about the materials, and then they would be further worked on by myself as well as my colleagues in the lab once again.”

Now that she has graduated, Schoenfuss will take everything she learned at Adelphi and use it at her internship at the Institute for American Indian Studies in Connecticut, where she will conduct tours and participate in lab work with archaeological materials. Eventually, Schoenfuss would like to teach, and she plans to attend graduate school after gaining more field experience.

“I think my time at Adelphi has trained me not only to handle the processing of artifacts, but has also given me the confidence to present and disseminate information to the public,” she stated.