Kureem Nugent ’18, Isabel O'Malley ’18, Paula Ortiz ’18, and Marquis Palmer ’18 have been named Watson Fellows providing them a $30,000 stipend to pursue a “year of independent, purposeful exploration” abroad. Although students from 40 peer schools are eligible to receive these awards, no other school had more than three recipients this year.
Student Fellowships Coordinator Virginia Dosch can’t remember a year in which another school had four recipients. The recipients’ projects are briefly described below. In the next month, profiles and complete descriptions of their year of travel will be presented on the news site.
Kureem Nugent
Sociology major
Jamaica, N.Y.
Project
Cultivating Cultural Capital: Exploring the Path to College
Countries Nugent will visit
Chile, Finland, Germany, and Japan
Summary
What does it mean to have equal access to higher education? This year I will explore different cultures’ pedagogical and social strategies to prepare students for postsecondary education, to build a greater understanding of the role cultural capital plays in the path to higher education.
Isabel O'Malley
Psychology major, creative writing and music minors
Chevy Chase, Md.
Project
Therapeutic Radio: Storytelling, Self-help, & Community Health Care
Countries O'Malley will visit
Russia, United Kingdom, Spain, South Africa, and Brazil
Summary
Therapeutic radio programs have been shown to assist people with mental and chronic health conditions. Volunteering with hospital and community radio programs I will learn the creative and practical ways that people suffering from mental and physical illness share their stories and facilitate their own mental health care.
Paula Ortiz
Art major, philosophy minor
Quito, Ecuador
Project
Active Meditation Across Disciplines of Impermanence
Countries Ortiz will visit
India, Japan, New Zealand, and Bolivia
Summary
This year I will engage devoted practices of active meditation by living in religious, agricultural and artisan communities around the world. My goal is to explore how meditative states of mind are experienced and induced across varied contexts and how awareness and transcendence, across cultures, shape meaning in people’s lives.
Marquis Palmer
Philosophy major, literature minor
Utica, N.Y.
Project
Skateboarding Communities
Countries Palmer will visit
Germany, Argentina, Spain, Japan
Summary
Joining skateboarding communities around the world, I will explore the defining values and practices that create them, and how they shape a way of life that is sustained among the societies in which they are embedded.
