From practicing journalism in Cambodia to teaching English in Thailand to fighting for the rights of low-wage workers in rural Washington, Whitties will pursue projects in all corners of the globe next year after receiving a diversity of fellowships, scholarships and grants. Whitman students and alumni received a wider variety of awards this year than in previous years, receiving funding for independent travel and study, teaching assistantships, research grants, placement in non-governmental organizations and graduate study.
“I’m delighted not only that Whitman students received such a great diversity of awards but also that so many class years of students and alumni are represented,” said Keith Raether, director of fellowships and grants.
Senior Seth Bergeson, one of two Whitman recipients of the prestigious Watson Fellowship, plans to study children’s games and childhood experiences in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, India and China. His project will focus on how games reflect societies and childhood experiences, while also examining the effects of gender, class and ethnicity.
As part of the Watson, Bergeson will receive a $25,000 grant for independent travel and study. He is excited that his Watson project fits with his overall career goals.
“I would like to do something internationally with children’s rights and global education, so my Watson will allow me to get to the very core of this: what children experience growing up around the world and how communities understand childhood,” he said in an e-mail.
Senior Nadim Damluji is Whitman’s other Watson recipient this year, whose project “Following Tintin’s Footsteps: Reconciling the Charm of Hergé’s Racism” will lead him to Belgium, France, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and India.
“I will trace the colonial implications of Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin by reconciling how the comic is both beloved and ultimately racist,” Damluji said in an article on the Whitman website. “First, I will study the cultural impact of Tintin as a beloved European icon. Second, I will retrace Tintin’s travels through the ‘Orient’ to see how modern cartoonists in these locations resist Hergé’s Orientalist representation. Through a series of interviews in these five countries I will examine how modern readers make sense of Tintin.”
Senior Dan Will is a recipient of a Fulbright grant, one of the nation’s most competitive awards. He will participate in a teaching assistantship in Germany, where he will help with middle and high school English classes.
Will hopes to pursue a career in international politics and sees the Fulbright grant as a way to gain a new international perspective.
“I am most looking forward to becoming integrated in the German culture and language, and to sharing my language and culture,” he said in an e-mail. “I am always very interested to learn about other people and their worldviews. Germany is also a very exciting place to live and is very well connected to the rest of Europe.”
Senior Jane Lutken will spend a year in Lille, France after receiving a Fullbright grant to participate in a teaching assistantship sponsored by the French Ministry of Education. She looks forward to returning to France after having studied abroad there.
“I did a teaching internship while I was [abroad],” said Lutken. “I absolutely loved it, so I’m most excited to get to experience teaching English again. I’m also excited to improve my French and live in France again.”
Senior Nicole West, a recipient of the Princeton in Asia fellowship, will be teaching English at a K-6 school in Nan, Thailand. West is interested in a career in global health, and she believes that this fellowship will help her pursue her career goals.
“It’s an opportunity to get some work experience in a developing country (which is especially important for grad school), develop some language skills and live in Thailand,” said West in an e-mail. “Hopefully, I will also be able to find a local health organization to get involved with as well.”
Applying for a fellowship involves a great deal of work for students. According to Raether, seniors who are interested in fellowships often apply to more than one program because the competition is fierce. Typically, applicants need to have a strong academic record, demonstrated leadership experience and lots of involvement in extracurricular activities.
The essays that students write are an especially crucial part of the application; applicants also need strong letters of recommendation from professors or employers. In addition, many fellowships require language experience, a qualification many students fulfill by studying abroad.
The selection process differs depending on the fellowship. Some fellowships involve an internal nomination process, where students’ applications are reviewed by Whitman, before an applicant progresses to the national level.
In the case of the Watson Fellowship, for example, an internal selection committee composed of Raether and faculty members appointed by the dean of the faculty select up to four Whitman students to move to the national Watson selection committee. The same internal competition is true for the Truman, Rhodes and Mitchell scholarships.
Yet other fellowships require that students submit their applications directly to the national selection committee, without having been screened by an internal Whitman selection committee.
Some fellowships are only available to participating schools, which limits the application pool. While the application process is certainly long and complex, it is also very rewarding for the applicants.
“It is a lot of work, but it is the most rewarding kind of work, because the students are doing all this interior thinking that will inform other applications for grad school, cover letters for jobs and essay competitions,” said Raether.
