Fellowships and other awards—from Fullbrights to Comptons—propel past, present and graduating students to foreign lands—from France to Cape Town. The administration will honor graduating fellowship recipients at a private ceremony.
Fulbright Fellowships
Five graduating seniors will be working abroad under the Fulbright Program, an “international exchange program offering opportunities for students, scholars, and professionals to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and [non-university] teaching,” according to the official Web site. Two of the seniors received English Teaching Assistantships, part of a special program under the Fulbright banner, and the other three developed independent research projects.
Allison Bloom received one of the English Teaching Assistantships. She will work in Uruguay, teaching English in both the provinces and Montevideo. As a side project, the women’s studies major will also research violence against women, a subject that Bloom previously studied.
Another recipient of an English Teaching Assistantship, Michael Frenkel will work at a high school in northern Spain. “The grant will enable me to devote a lot of time to activities outside the classroom,” he wrote in an e-mailed statement. Some of these include beginning a debate team at the high school, as well as taking courses at the local university. “[I] am planning to look at the social and political effects of the country’s particularly difficult economic situation,” Frenkel wrote.
Laura Fletcher created her own project for her research grant. In addition to attending classes at Beijing Normal University, she will study Chinese school counselors’ techniques and psychological theories by comparing counseling in Beijing and Qingdao. “Since the field of psychology is relatively new to China, I feel that it is important to see how it is developing and being used and understood by the next generation,” Fletcher wrote in an e-mailed statement.
Jonathan Kaiman will study the musical traditions of the Yi, a cultural and ethnic group in Southwest China. He will analyze modern influences on Yi music, particularly with respect to the differences between rural village areas and more modern urban centers. To that end, his research will involve collecting folk songs in the countryside, attending performances, and holding songwriting workshops at local high schools. “[This is] something I’ve been dreaming about for a long time,” Kaiman wrote in an e-mailed statement.
Sasha Steinberg will work on a self-developed project, entitled “Arts in Public, Publics in Art: Representing Moscow.” The project is a study of Russian art in contemporary society, which should augment Steinberg’s independent major in modern literatures. As part of his research, he will take classes at Russian State University for the Humanities. “I believe that the arts,” Steinberg wrote in an e-mailed statement, “should be used to critique and examine contemporary social reality.”
French Government Teaching Assistantships
The French Ministry of Education gave French Government Teaching Assistantships to five graduating seniors—Samuel Anderson, Kate Fussner, Dana Levin, Brian Mawyer and Elizabeth Wachtel. This award, Mawyer explained in an e-mailed statement, “is offered by the French government to bring native speakers of different languages to schools all over France for students learning that language.”
Anderson will be based in the region of Aix-Marseille. “I’m very happy to be placed in the Aix-Marseille region because it’s home to a lot of West and North African immigrant populations,” Anderson wrote in an e-mailed statement, “and I hope that I’ll be able to learn more about their communities.” Anderson expressed a desire to return fluent in French and with a working knowledge of Arabic, as well.
Fussner will head to Paris, where she will work with English teachers and English-language clubs, as well as working individually and in groups with students. Fussner is a double major in French and English, and she spent her Junior Year Abroad in Paris. “[I] fell in love with the city,” Fussner wrote in an e-mailed statement. “I can’t wait to go back!”
Levin also studied in Paris during her Vassar career, but her Teaching Assistantship is in the Strasbourg province. A current French Department Intern, Levin is considering a career in education, and she explained that the experience should be able to help her to decide upon a career.
Mawyer will work with students at the Académie of Besançon to “expose them to the English language and American culture,” he wrote in an e-mailed statement. A film major with a correlate in French, Mawyer also intended to “be inspired to work on a screenplay” during his time in France.
Compton Fellowship
Jacqueline Law and Juliana Valente are two of this year’s Compton Fellows. As part of a program sponsored by Vassar and nine other colleges, the Compton Mentor Fellowship sponsors students’ initiatives to “envision a world in which humans live in harmony with each other and in sustainable balance with the earth.”
Law, the founder of the Vassar Uganda Project, is overjoyed to be able to return to the Iganga province through her fellowship, entitled “Safe Mothers, Safe Babies.” Her goal is “to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity through sustainable, demand-driven and collaborative means,” she wrote in an e-mailed statement.
To that end, she will work with local hospitals to institute, among other things, a motorcycle ambulance program, as well as assist in the construction of several wells and distribute mosquito nets and “Safe Baby OB Kits.” Most of all, Law wrote, she is eager to live with the Ugandan people. “It teaches me about the conditions I’m trying to affect, and helps me create the relationships of trust and respect that I need in order to make the program more successful,” she wrote.
The Ann Cornelisen Fellowship
Four seniors also received the Ann Cornelisen Fellowship for Language Study Abroad, just announced recently. This award, unique to Vassar, was sponsored by an alumna’s gift to Vassar. The College Committee on Fellowships chooses the winners.
Amanda Jameson, an English and anthropology double major, will participate in a program run by the American Institute of Indian Studies. Studying in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, she hopes to become fluent in Hindi in order to find work with the State Department’s Foreign or Civil Service.
Another anthropology major, Hannah Roth will spend next year enrolled in an intensive Arabic-language program at the American University of Cairo. “By the end of next year I hope to be proficient in Arabic and have had an incredible immersion experience in Egypt!” she wrote in an e-mailed statement.
Emily Thompson will study Quechua in Peru through her fellowship. “I hope that the ability to speak Quechua as well as Spanish will enable me to work with more people—specifically speakers of indigenous languages—to maneuver our convoluted legal system to obtain visas, asylum and refugee status,” she wrote in an e-mailed statement.
The Vassar Maguire Fellowship
The Maguire fellowship sponsors pursuing degrees abroad in a broad range of humanities and is also distributed by the Committee on Fellowships. Three seniors—Luis Hoyos, Katherine Jensen and Tendai Musakwa—have been awarded this fellowship to continue their studies.
Hoyos will do graduate work at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. As part of an Honours Programme in Gender Studies and Development, he wrote in an e-mailed statement, “I will be studying LGBTQI human rights legislation in post-apartheid South Africa, focusing on the political debates that led to the adoption of the 1996 Bill of Rights that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Jensen will conduct her research in Argentina, studying the region’s human rights organizations. A Latin American and Latino/a studies major with a comparative politics correlate, she will pursue university study as well as field research in Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Rosario. “I hope to gain insight into how relationships between non-profit organizations can affect their prevalence in the public sphere and learn more about social justice organizations,” Jensen wrote in an e-mailed statement.
Musakwa, a Chinese and political science double major, will study Chinese politics at the Oxford University. Interested in China since a young age, Musakwa has traveled to China several times during his Vassar years, and he is eager to continue his research. Musakwa plans to write a doctoral thesis on Chinese studies or comparative politics.
As the recipients of the above fellowships and awards indicate, a Vassar education can take students all over the world.
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