This year’s applicants for fellowships and grants will face fierce competition.
Not only are budget cuts a threat, but “more students are applying to graduate schools and for fellowships to help them through because the job market is paralyzed,” said Director of Fellowships and Grants Keith Raether, who works directly with students to help them succeed in attaining such awards. “Competition is even keener. It makes applicants even more commendable.”
Programs that have been suspended include the Jack Kent Cook Scholarships, the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships and the American Graduate Fellowship. Humanity in Action, a summer fellowship program that has chosen Whitman students in the past, has tentatively cut their Paris program and will reduce the number of applicants accepted. Many more are cutting back or will reduce the number of applicants accepted.
Seniors Dan Will and Seth Bergeson are both braving this year’s difficult application climate. Will hopes to get a Fulbright fellowship for a teaching assistantship in Germany, where he studied abroad for his full junior year. Bergeson is applying for the Fulbright and Watson fellowships and the LUCE scholars program, which just this year was made available to Whitman students.
For Will, the Fulbright application made perfect sense. He would get the chance to return to Germany, where he helped teach English in a combined middle and high school during his year abroad.
“I feel like I’ll be giving back to Germany, since I’ve benefited a lot from being there and getting to know German culture,” said Will.
Bergeson has several plans in the works that have made his senior year “quite, quite busy.” As a veteran of the Humanity in Action program, he has seen first-hand the effect these grants can have on people.
“It catalyzed my interest in human rights,” Bergeson said.
His Fulbright application centers on a plan to research the effect of prison time on family members and how reintegration occurs in Senegal, where he studied abroad. For his Watson proposal, he is proposing a study analyzing how children play in different parts of the world.
Applicants looking for help will find it readily available in the Fellowships and Grants office.
“The process is so important and it stretches beyond winning an award or losing in a competition. It is all about the self-awareness gained in the process,” said Raether.
Whitman’s traditional strength in this field is a testament to the hard work of students like Bergeson and Will. Combined, students have received 47 Fulbrights, 12 Watsons, 11 Trumans, and 13 National Science Foundation Research Fellowship awards, among other grants, in the last 10 years.
Alumna Aisha Fukushima ’09 received a Watson fellowship and is currently studying “raptivism” around the world.
Fukushima said in an e-mail from Cape Town, South Africa, “I sense that in a less tangible way, this year has also expanded and tested my personal character, my ability to know myself and to work in many different, new surroundings in a way that will have a major influence on my work and lifestyle for the rest of my adult life.”
