Students Earn Watson Fellowships

Host of awards will allow students, alumni to explore peace, foreign affairs, languages, science and more

Caption: Navdeep Aujla ’11, who earned a Pickering Undergraduate Foreign Affairs Fellowship, presents her research at the Whitman Undergraduate Conference in 2010 on the 1953 coup in Iran and its effect on Iranian-American political relations.

Nadim Damluji ’10 and Seth Bergeson ’10 were two of 40 students in the nation this year awarded a Thomas J. Watson Foundation fellowship. In all, Whitman students and graduates earned awards in 18 different fellowship, scholarship and grant programs.

The count includes three Fulbright awards, a Scoville fellowship, a Pickering Undergraduate fellowship, three Princeton in Asia (PIA) fellowships, two National Science Foundation fellowships, two U.S. State Department Critical Language scholarships and a Humanity in Action (HIA) fellowship.

Whitman students also received a Killam scholarship, Princeton in Latin America (PILA) fellowship, DMI Scholars award and Roosevelt Institute fellowship. It was the college’s first participation in each of these four award programs.

“Two of our primary goals this year were to expand the range of awards on our students’ radar and to work with more alumni,” said Keith Raether, director of fellowships and grants. “If we’ve succeeded, it’s because of the enterprise of our undergraduates and the abiding relationship Whitman enjoys with its graduates. I’m amazed by their resolve in the face of the stiffest competition in the history of most of these awards.”

Nadim Damluji
Zach Duffy
AnnieRoberts
Dan Will

Here is a look at several recipients and where their awards will take them:

• Over the next year, Nadim Damluji ’10 will travel to Belgium, France, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and China to “trace the colonial implications of Herge’s ‘The Adventures of Tintin’ by reconciling how the comic is both beloved and ultimately racist,” Damluji wrote in his application. Seth Bergeson ’10 will travel to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania, Rwanda, India and China to study “Kids at Play: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Games and Childhood.”
• Nate Cohn ’10 earned the Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship and will spend six months in Washington, D.C., as a full-time project assistant to study issues of peace and security (See Undebatable Success).
• Navdeep Aujla ’11, a politics major from Everett, Wash., will receive $50,000 for each of her next two years of education as a recipient of the Pickering Undergraduate Foreign Affairs Fellowship, which aims to develop outstanding students interested in pursuing a Foreign Service career.
• Jane Lutken ’10, Dan Will ’10 and Jens-Erik Lund Snee ’09 earned Fulbright U.S. Student Program awards. Lutken will teach English in France through an award from the French Ministry of Education. Will will teach English in Germany, and Lund Snee will conduct research in New Zealand.
• Thomas Miller ’07 earned a Princeton in Asia Fellowship that will take him to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he will work as a reporter for the Phnom Penh Post. He was also a finalist in the Luce Scholars Program.
• Nicole West ’10 and Anna Bacheller ’09 also earned PIA fellowships. They each will teach English in K-6 schools in Thailand.
• Caitlin Schoenfelder ’09 earned a Princeton in Latin America Fellowship, which will take her to Puebla, Mexico, to be a tutor for a nongovernmental organization.
• Tamara Carley ’08 and Bridget Kustin ’05 each earned a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Both will work on their doctorates: Carley in petrology at Vanderbilt University and Kustin in cultural anthropology at Johns Hopkins University.
• Annie Roberts ’10 earned a Humanity in Action Fellowship through HIA’s Denmark program to study human rights and social justice.
• Thomas Friedenbach ’12 earned a Killam Scholarship for six months of study at the University of Toronto, University of British Columbia or University of Alberta.
• Jaspreet Gill ’11 and Carli Ing ’11 each earned a Critical Language Scholarship through the U.S. Department of State. Gill, a history major from Snohomish, Wash., will study Punjabi in India; and Ing, an Asian studies major from Kaneohe, Hawaii, will study Japanese in Japan.
• Zach Duffy ’12, a politics major from New York, N.Y., will intern with the AFL-CIO in a leadership development program in Washington, D.C., through a Roosevelt Institute Fellowship. Afterward, he will join nine students selected from across the nation to participate in the DMI Scholars program, which includes two weeks of intensive public policy training and networking opportunities in New York City.

For the latest award news, visit the Office of Fellowships and Grants.