After spending her time at CC learning how to think critically and ask important questions, Audrey Dervarics ’19 is now pursuing a PhD in Global Health at Arizona State University (ASU), where she is conducting community-based research on chronic diseases and the built environment.
Dervarics originally planned to focus on forensic anthropology and bioarcheology, as she was fascinated by the stories stored in skeletons. However, after taking courses in almost every social science field offered at CC, she realized that she wanted to pursue the larger implications of how the body is impacted by the environment.
“The stories I sought were in the living as well as the dead,” says the former Anthropology major and Human Biology and Kinesiology (HBK) minor. “Reflecting on my research projects at CC, there is a clear thread of the mutually constitutive relationship between us and our environment. We shape it and it shapes us. But the truth is that not all environments are the same. Historical processes have shaped the quality of neighborhoods to the point that their differences are a large force driving racial health disparities. My work at ASU focuses on this thread. It aims to understand how the places we live impact our bodies.”
Dervarics has spent the past five years doing a mix of hands-on work experience at the OMNI Institute, a nonprofit social science consultancy firm in Denver, and starting her PhD program in ASU’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change.
After graduation, Dervarics worked for OMNI Institute as a Research Assistant before being promoted to Research Associate a year later. She spent three years providing technical, data management, and reporting support for research and evaluation projects on behavioral health, justice initiatives, and economic supports.
“While CC taught me how to think, it was my time at OMNI that gave me the most practical skills,” says Dervarics. “From data entry to survey creation to project management, these ‘harder’ skills complemented the critical thinking, reading, and writing skills I had cultivated at CC.”
Dervarics earned her Master’s in Global Health at ASU last spring and is currently halfway through the third year of her PhD program. She won a 2023 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in Biological Anthropology, earning three years of financial support towards graduate school.
Dervarics is in a unique position, having experienced both the intimate environment of CC with experiential learning and small class sizes, as well as classes at a large, research-heavy university.
“The depth at which the Block Plan forces you to engage with your topic pushes you past simply consuming information,” Dervarics says. “It makes you think critically about it. I would say, in many scenarios, the conversations that occurred in the upper-level discussion-based classes at CC are akin to the ones happening in my classes currently. There was a point in my studies where I questioned if an R1 would have been better suited for my specialty. Larger schools would have had a larger collection of skeletal remains with which to work, more classes in my specific area, more students interested in this topic, but I have since realized that what I gained at CC was more intangible than learning how to identify a humerus. The lack of a defined specialization meant that I took a wide breadth of classes and had a more intellectually diverse community. With this background, I am better equipped to reach across the disciplines necessary for my current research.”
Dervarics went into CC knowing that she wanted to study Anthropology and would likely go to graduate school. However, it wasn’t until she took classes and met professors in the Anthropology Department that she realized the specific field she wanted to pursue.
“My advisor, Dr. Fish, should take much of the credit for my success at CC and after,” Dervarics says. “From opening her lab to me after hours so I could get extra practice in identifying bones, to working incredibly close with me through my senior thesis project, it was this close mentorship that built my research skills in undergrad.”
“I’m probably most proud of how well Audrey uses a mixture of science and social science methods to explore how systems of power impact the lived experience of people, especially people from historically marginalized communities,” says Dr. Krista Fish ’97, Associate Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department. “Audrey is such a good human being and good scientist – we need more like her.”
Dervarics says that her current research interests were sparked in Fish’s Evolution of Human Life Histories class, as they discussed how the evolutionary history of our bodies shapes our lives today.
Dervarics says that in addition to Fish, Student Success Specialist Gretchen Wardell was incredibly influential during her time at CC. “Gretchen’s empathetic support throughout and beyond my time at CC was a true gift,” Dervarics says. “She guided me through job decisions, read over all my resumes, and edited personal statements. I feel very fortunate to have had such a mentor that supported me not only as a professional, but a person too.”
“Audrey has been a pure joy to work with over the years,” Wardell says. “She was an eager student who wanted the most out of her education. She worked tirelessly in her classes as well as on her post graduate opportunities. She asked questions, networked, wrote essays and revised her resume multiple times. She landed a fantastic opportunity which set her up well for her PhD program. I can’t wait to see where she goes after she finishes at ASU. She is going to set the world on fire!”
Dervarics is also grateful for the HBK Department, which she says was a major part of her CC experience. “To have an undergraduate-only anatomical donor lab on a small liberal arts campus is truly remarkable and one of my favorite experiences,” she says. “My retention of anatomy continues to this day thanks to the hands-on learning that lab provided.”
“As my work sits at the confluence of anthropology, public health and urban planning, my ability to codeswitch between fields was built from the language gained through the varied classes I took at CC,” Dervarics continues. “As my current advisor continuously repeats, it is never bad to read widely. The truth is if you want to do work that is truly impactful, at least in any science that interfaces with the public, being able to explain things multiple ways, to different groups of people will never be a bad thing. It is necessary to move science outside of its ivory tower.”
Dervarics says she is very grateful for her experiences on campus and for the opportunities CC gave her. She received financial support from CC which allowed her to participate in internships at the Smithsonian Institution for three summers as a student.
In addition to incredible experiences and connections, these internships gave Dervarics access to the skeletal collection that she conducted her senior thesis on. “Said project was also graciously financially supported by both the Anthropology Department and the Venture Grant,” Dervarics adds. “For a small school to have a robust research pool for student to not only do research, but then present at national conferences is rare.”
Dervarics is still taking the foundational classes for her PhD program, so much of her time now is spent reading and discussing while she decides the details of her project. She plans to spend this upcoming semester meeting with key informants in Phoenix, AZ to better understand the specific issues related to chronic disease and the built environment in the communities she hopes to work with.
Dervarics is on track to finish her PhD in December 2028, though she has not made any firm plans for after graduation. She hopes to continue doing community-based research on how the infrastructure we use for everyday life, such as sidewalks, parks, houses, and buildings, impacts people’s health and chronic diseases.
“In what setting I will be doing this work, as a professor or a post-doc at a university, in a governmental capacity or at a non-profit or non-governmental organization, is still up for debate,” Dervarics says. “I want to land in whatever sector allows me to do the widest breadth of the things I want to do, which will likely mean my career will be a mosaic of all of them. We are an amalgamation of the experiences we have had so where I will land, the work I do, the kind of researcher I am, will have been shaped not only by the technical skills I’m gaining at ASU and the big picture thinking skills acquired at CC, but all the mentors, jobs, and opportunities I have had along the way.”