CSU masters graduate, Francois Dengah, was recently honored as a recipient of the Richard A. Krause Award. This honor is in recognition of “outstanding accomplishments in teaching, research, and service by a graduate student.” Dengah is pictured at left in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil, while conducting field work. A current doctoral student at the University of Alabama, Dengah has achieved a distinguished record of research, publication and teaching.

Dengah’s research interests include mixed methods in anthropological fieldwork, religion, and the relationship between environmental stressors and mental health. He is working on his dissertation which is a continuation of the master’s research he conducted while at CSU which compared the mental health of male and female Mormon college students in Colorado.

This research demonstrated that female Mormon students who balance both the cultural models of their faith and secular society exhibit less stress than those who were more dogmatic in their beliefs and actions.

Dengah is examining how the practices and beliefs of Pentecostal traditions affect the mental health of recent converts in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He explores how Pentecostal beliefs and communities offer an alternative set of cultural models (as compared to the larger Brazilian society) to become consonance with, in the creation and expression of identity.

In addition to his interests in medical anthropology, Dengah is a part-time archaeologist who has participated on archaeological projects in Albania, France, Utah and Texas. Most recently, he surveyed a proto-Tarascan “city” in West Mexico.