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Her thesis adviser, professor of sociology John Pock, describes Burgard's interests as "diffuse," which seems an accurate assessment of a woman who gives the impression of enormous energy, barely reined in. She's a self-described cynic who comes across as a bright-eyed optimist; a farm girl, certain she would go to veterinary school, who instead has designed her own degree in international and comparative policy studies; an artist who's chosen to help guide the course of history halfway across the world. Ironically, her skill as a painter put her on her present course as a budding sociologist. Burgard grew up in West Bend, Wisconsin, the first of four children living out in the country with her parents, "hippies and born-again Christians" who often had Bible studies and church meetings at their home. "It wasn't the typical Bible study, it was a lot of long-haired people with interesting clothing. It was almost Reedlike, because you had all these people learning and communing with each other," Although these days she tends to see religion from a sociological perspective, as a particular social grouping, Burgard values the lessons about community that she learned in this very "wholesome and healthy" environment. As soon as she could drive, she began going into town to work. "I always had two or three jobs at a time, and once I worked at night in a donut shop. The guy I worked for there decided he wanted me to paint the back of the store with a big mural of these donuts dancing around and coffee cups and such." As the painting took shape, people starting gathering around to drink coffee, chat, and watch her work. Finally, when she finished the mural, the local newspaper ran an article on her and her project, and she realized how excited everyone was that a young person would do something positive for her town: "Just the way people responded to this happy thing was tremendous." She identifies this as a decisive moment, one that pushed her toward the study of community and the public. The Kettering Foundation, based in Dayton, Ohio, focuses on politics as a dimension of everyday life, on the way in which people can work together in community groups to understand and solve problems. The goal is to help people see themselves as members of an active public, rather than as passive observers of society. Burgard worked as a researcher and as a facilitator for Kettering, going out to local groups and guiding their discussions of a particular problem. "I've been a student for so long," she said, "that to go and work for an organization that's out in the world was great, because I really talked to people about problems rather than running to the library and looking up a hundred sources to read." In addition, Burgard met numerous international fellows, brought to study at Kettering from all over Eastern Europe, and from them learned about economic reform, not out of a book but from "real people going to the store and waiting in line and trying to figure out what they're going to do about inflation." She feels that the most important part of her summer was this close work with people from other cultures, because "you realize that you're all the same species and you all have to eat lunch." At Reed, Burgard studies social stratification and status attainment, which is concerned directly with human potential and its use. For her senior thesis, she will analyze data collected for a study organized by Don Treiman '62 on the social backgrounds of entrepreneurs in Slovakia. Her attention is strongly focused on Eastern Europe because of its current shift to a market economy. "What's interesting is to see whether or not this transition is going to be a deviation from, or whether it's going to follow, the path of Western capitalism. It looks like it's developing its own little trajectory, so all these theories of modernization are being tested." In this transition, acquired skills become more important than characteristics such as family name or party affiliation. "What that does," she said, "is lets people's potential really come through." As for her own enormous potential, after graduate school and a degree in law, Burgard aims to settle for a time in an Eastern European country--Czechoslovakia or Bulgaria. She hopes to work as a legal consultant, helping government officials rewrite tax code and making business law more friendly to small entrepreneurs: "I'd like to be able to guide the changes as society grows." Speaking with Burgard and feeling the air of calm, confident focus that seems to stretch beyond potential obstacles toward solutions, it is easy to imagine her achieving this goal. Sarah Oakes is a freelance writer who lives in Portland.