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Vassar Announces 2008 Fellowship Recipients
This year, an impressive eight Vassar seniors and one alumnus were awarded the honor of Fulbright Fellowships. In recent years, Vassar has had much success in the number of Fulbrights students have received, ranking number 4 out of the top 10 producing bachelor’s institutions. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright Program aims to foster mutual understanding and communication between the United States and other nations of the world.
For Emma Woelk ’08, her Fulbright award will bring her to Germany to study health care and social services for the disabled in the German Democratic Republic. Anna Volk ’08 will teach in Colombia; Maguerite O’Haire ’08 will work at the Centre for Companion Animal Health at the University of Queensland, Australia; and Morgan Warners ’08 will pursue an M.A. in American Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Jacob Rivkin ’07 will travel to China where he will learn traditional Chinese landscape painting in Hangzhou at the International College China Academy of Art. Frederick Deknatel ’08 will study Modern Standard Arabic at the Arabic Language Center at the University of Damascus in Syria.
Several students will travel abroad via the Fulbright’s English Teaching Assistantships (ETA) Program. Going to Chile is Lucy Robins ’08; she plans to look for a position as a science teaching assistant in the local secondary school. Erin Bergevin ’08 will create an Internet-based program for overseas communication between German and American students learning one another’s language. And Tracey Blasenheim ’08 plans to research the Battle of Gallipoli in Turkey.
In addition, Dane Roth ’08 (pictured), a triple major in political science, Asian studies, and Chinese, has been awarded the Watson Fellowship for independent study and travel outside the United States for 2008–09. Roth was one of 50 fellows selected out of a pool of 175, and will travel to Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China to work on his project entitled “The Characters on the Wall: Graffiti as a Political Voice in China.” Through his research, Roth will attempt to examine the use of graffiti as a political and social outlet for disenfranchised groups in China.
An array of other fellowships and grants were awarded to even more Vassar students this year, including the Compton Mentor Fellowship, the James Madison Memorial Fellowship, and the Davis United World College Scholars Davis Projects for Peace Prize. The Office for Fellowships and Pre-Professional Advising also have several fellowships open to alumnae/i. Contact the director, Lisa Kooperman, at likooperman@vassar.edu for more information.