In This Section:
Creating a career in the music business - Vanessa
Kafka '06 (BUS )
Aiming for a good outcome without risk - Robert
Pietrzak '03 (M.P.H.)
Kafka looks forward to challenges
Vanessa Kafka ’06 (BUS) knows how to draw a crowd.
Photo: Peter Morenus
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| Vanessa Kafka ’06 (BUS) is working to learn both the business and performance sides of the music industry. |
As a member of the UConn Honors Council, she has publicized campus events such as a charity ball for Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp.
As a singer/songwriter, she regularly entertains students and faculty at local performances. As a junior this year majoring in business with a concentration in marketing, Kafka is trying to integrate her UConn education with her passion for music.
“I’ve always had my eye on music, but because it’s so hard to get into I didn’t want to limit my options,” she says. “Studying business allows me to explore the various directions I can take within the music industry.”
Kafka’s musical journey began at an early age when she organized local talent shows. A self-taught singer, she studied acoustic guitar as a youngster and by high school was performing in musicals and a women’s chorus. She also developed a loyal fan base for her concerts at area coffee houses.
“At first I was concerned about whether I would be able to find my niche at UConn,” Kafka says. But during her freshman year, the sounds of music from her residence hall room overheard by fellow students soon led to impromptu performances and then to coffee house concerts, where Kafka sells copies of a self-recorded compact disc. Her music can be downloaded through her Web site, www.vanessakafka.com, which she continues to develop.
Hoping to expand her solo act, she is now starting to work occasionally with a pianist and guitarist. Participating in the campus organization that is run by honors students also has helped Kafka to hone her marketing skills.
“Doing public relations for the Honors Council during my freshman year gave me a lot of really good connections,” she says. This year, as operations chair for the council, her duties include managing the group’s Web site which she designed and is now working to complete.
Community service is important to Kafka, who helps organize Honors Council events such as “International Nite,” which raises funds for scholarships for students interested in multicultural diversity. She is also a community assistant, formerly known as resident advisor, to freshmen living in the Towers Residence Halls.
“I’ve found new friends, who come from all over Connecticut and all over the United States,” Kafka says, adding her education, in and out of the classroom, has broadened her expectations.
“I tend to plan a lot and thought when I graduated from high school, I would earn an honors degree, hopefully go on to graduate school, and basically have a steady job,” she says. “Now I want to make sure I don’t regret anything . . . and would love to do something that has to do with music and business.
“My first two years at UConn have been some of the best years of my life, and I look forward to the next two years and the challenges that await me.”
Doctoral candidate studies pathological gamblers
Photo: Peter Morenus
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| Robert Pietrzak ’03 M.P. H. earned two major awards for his graduate work on problem gamblers before starting his doctoral program at the UConn Health Center. |
Robert Pietrzak ’03 M.P.H. is not the betting type, but there’s a good chance his work will help older gamblers and others at risk of developing serious gambling problems.
Pietrzak has earned two major awards for his research, which is part of a federally funded project on gambling being conducted by UConn psychologist Nancy Petry, who heads the Gambling Treatment and Research Center at the UConn Health Center.
“Our goal is to identify health problems, social problems and psychological problems of gamblers and the best way to treat them,” says Pietrzak, who this year is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology, following completion of a master’s of public health degree at the UConn Health Center.
“Nancy offered me the opportunity to work with her group study while I was in the master’s program,” Pietrzak says, adding he already had an interest in addiction psychiatry, including gambling, while doing undergraduate work.
Working with Petry has improved his skills as a researcher, clinician and writer, he says, which resulted in earning top awards for his master’s thesis on gambling disorders in senior citizens. The paper, “Health and Psychosocial Correlates of Disordered Gambling on Older Adults,” earned recognition from both the National Council on Problem Gambling and the International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and High-Risk Behaviors in Montreal, and it was published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.
The research involved screening older adults from nearly 20 senior centers throughout Connecticut, several gambling treatment centers and visitors to the Mohegan Sun casino.
“Eighty percent of those selected were problem gamblers, and 20 percent were pathological gamblers,” Pietrzak says, noting that problem gamblers may experience several mild to moderate problems associated with gambling. These may include preoccupation with gambling, the need to gamble with increasing amounts to achieve the desired excitement, restlessness or irritability when trying to curtail gambling, or lying to family members to minimize the extent of gambling activities. Pathological gamblers experience all of these problems.
Pietrzak says UConn’s M.P.H. program has given him a broader perspective on health problems, including social and environmental influences, and he currently is looking at ways to identify youths, college students and other groups at risk for “developing not only financial problems but also psychological and substance abuse problems.” He is conducting gambling screenings in community health centers in the Hartford area to examine rates of problem gambling in this area.
With the popularity today of gambling, does Pietrzak indulge at all? He says the closest he ever gets to it, apart from his research, is attending comedy shows at the Mohegan Sun.
His mentor, Petry, however, is willing to wager “he’s going to have a very promising career” in psychological research. — Karen Singer ’73 (CLAS)