Fellowship Recipients

Hometown: Seattle, Washington

Major: Environmental Sociology

Interests: Climbing, skiing, kayaking, surfing, reading, writing, making new friends

Favorite memory: Learning a new language or being chased by a kangaroo.

Words to live by: Don't be afraid to allow your heart to be as big as it can possibly be.

Major: Gender Studies

Interests: Social justice, fashion, indie music

Best travel experience: Seattle, post-graduation, because if you go to Whitman then that's where all your friends move to.

What people don't know about me: I once got kicked out of a game of Bananagrams for winning too much.

Words to live by: "It's so easy to laugh, it's so easy to hate. It takes strength to be gentle and kind." (Morrissey)

Hometown: Portland, Oregon

Major: Sociology

Interests: Travel, French language, cycling

Best travel experience: I have found travel to be the most rewarding when I stay several weeks or months in one place and integrate into the culture.

What people don't know about me: I have an EU passport, making my life abroad about 100 times easier.

Words to live by: "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go." (Dr. Seuss)

Hometown: Sequim, Washington

Major: English

Interests: Creative writing, music, solo travel, history, running, cooking, strange outfits, Corgis

Best travel experience: I'm living it right now!

What people don't know about me: I take a really long time to grocery shop.

Words to live by: "Live your emotional truth, man." (my stellar English friend Rosanna)

Hometown: Everett, Washington

Major: B.A, Foreign Languages and Literatures: Spanish (with honors)

Interests: Pre K-12 Education Policy. I have a passion for, and a commitment to, serving our youth. I am passionate about contributing my time and effort toward diminishing inter-generational poverty, mentoring young people and engaging my community to become civically engaged.

Best travel experience: Toledo, España

What people don't know about me: Spanish is my third language. My primary language is Mixteco. I learned English in grade school. I began taking Spanish classes in high school because I wanted to fit in as a Mexican, as a Latina.

Words to live by: Be kind. Work hard. Practice self-care. Serve with humility. Go through all experiences with an open heart and an open mind. And, always remember: "¡Si se puede!"

Hometown: Chicago, Illinois

Major: Geology

Interests: Summer, podcasts, running, taking showers, going on adventures

Best travel experience: Going to Los Angeles and the ocean with my cross country team.

What people don't know about me: Before I saw it for myself in college, I thought the Milky Way was a myth.

Words to live by: "Climb the mountain not to plant your flag but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air, and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can
see you." (David McCullough Jr.)

Hometown: Sacramento

Major: History

Interests: Running slowly and reading long form journalism

Best travel experience: Trying to find a train with friends in the Czech countryside while studying abroad.

What people don't know about me: I love listening to Top 40 in the car.

Words to live by: "Go to where the silence is and say something." -- Amy Goodman

Hometown: Quito, Ecuador

Interests/pleasures: Charcoal drawing, dancing, running, writing

Best travel experience: Visiting Burma's ancient capital, Bagan, in 2011

What people don't know about me: I really wish I could sing well.

Words to live by: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." (Dr. Seuss)

Hometown: Seattle, Washington

Interests/pleasures: teaching, cooking, preserving food, backgammon, painting

Best travel experience: Trying a macaroon for the first time in Paris when I was 13. We called them "dessert hamburgers"!

What people don't know about me: I could grow old happily in Walla Walla.

Words to live by: "Alice laughed. ‘One can't believe impossible things.' ‘I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. ‘. . .Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'"
(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1871)

Hometown: Seattle, WashingtonMajor: German Studies

Interests/pleasures: radio, music, journalism, travel, languages

Best travel experience: Wandering Istanbul with my Kumpels.

What people don't know about me: Although I keep ending up in landlocked places, I love surfing. In my old age, I will become a beach bum.

Words to live by: "All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night . . . wake in the day to find out that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible." (T.E. Lawrence)

Hometown: Hermosa Beach, California

Major: Foreign Languages and Literatures (French)

Interests/pleasures: Reading, new foods, museum-hopping, cats

Best travel experience: Marseille, Aix-en-Provence and Arles, Fall 2012

What people don't know about me: I have a male alter ego named Carl.

Words to live by: "Il est utile de connaître d'autres langues que la sienna . . . C'est comme de connaître d'autres gens, d'autres pays." ("It is useful to know languages other than your own . . . It's like knowing other people, other countries.") (Assia Djebar)

Hometown: Anchorage, Alaska

Major: Biology

Interests/pleasures: biology, reading, foreign-exchange markets, technical writing, flightless birds, human evolution, carotenoids

Best travel experience: Italy, 2011, with professors Chris Wallace and Ginger Withers for International Brain Organization World Congress.

What people don't know about me: I've always wanted to live in Arizona.

Words to live by: "Theories have four stages of acceptance: 1) this is worthless; 2)this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view; 3)this is true, but quite unimportant; 4) I always said so." (J.B.S. Haldane)

Hometown: Carson City, NevadaMajor: English

Interests/pleasures: writing, reading, swimming, magic, music (The Gathering)

Best travel experience: climbing the Volkerschlacht Denkmal in Leipzig, a massive memorial commemorating the defeat of Napoleon near Leipzig.

What people don't know about me: While I'm an introvert at heart, I really enjoy meeting new people, even if I don't show it at the time.

Words to live by: "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." (Arthur Edgar O'Shaughnessy)

Hometown: Bainbridge Island, WashingtonMajor: Applied Physics (through the 3/2 program)

Interests/pleasures: skiing, basketball, sailing, baseball, coffee

Best travel experience: Sailing with my family in the San Juan Islands.

What people don't know about me: I worked for a summer at a salmon processing plant in Alaska.

Words to live by: "Ask people how they got there, because I guarantee that no one took a direct path with no detours."

Hometown: Seattle, WashingtonMajor: History

Interests/pleasures: cycling, chocolate fondue, people, "oldies" records

Best travel experience: An 88-hour bus trip across Senegal and Mali.

What people don't know about me: I'm a scholar of British romantic comedies.

Words to live by: "If things start happening, don't worry. Don't stew. Just go right along, and you'll start happening too." (Dr. Seuss)

Hometown: Bellingham, Washington

Major: English

Interests/pleasures: creative writing, Drama Club, The Pioneer

Best travel experience: Study abroad in India, 2010.

What people don't know about me: In high school I was a member of a mime troupe.

Words to live by: "Vertigo is the conflict between fear of falling and the desire to fall" (Rushdie)

Hometown: Walla Walla, Washington

Interests/pleasures: Music, food, playing drums, travel, reading, baseball, trying to speak foreign languages

Best travel experience: Independent study project in Bodhgaya, India, on study abroad, 2007.

What people don't know about me: I'm a synaesthete; I experience music and sound as colorful, visual shapes and landscapes in my mind's eye.

Words to live by: "How strange it is to be anything at all." (Jeff Mangum)

Hometown: Seattle, Washington

Major: Psychology

Interests/pleasures: Music, hiking, new ways to dance and move, baking, slacklining, chocolate, rafting, languages, swimming, travel, new instruments

Best travel experience: Going to a friend's village to visit his family for Teej, the women's festival, in Nepal.

What people don't know about me: My feet are as flat as a pancake.

Words to live by: "Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." (Rumi)

Hometown: Seattle, WashingtonMajor: Social Psychology

Interests/pleasures: international travel, Ultimate Frisbee, ceramics, whitewater rafting, snowboarding

Best travel experience: Hearing our team's name echo from the stadium speakers as World Champion and "Spirit of the Game" award recipient for sportsmanship. Never have I had a prouder moment as a coach.

What people don't know about me: Growing up, I spent multiple nights sleeping in igloos on snowboarding trips in the Northwest.

Words to live by: Live in the moment and cherish every moment.

Hometown: Glendale, WisconsinMajor: English

Interests/pleasures: Literature, literary theory, continental philosophy, swimming, ceramics, French, cats, board games

Best travel experience: study abroad in Paris.

What people don't know about me: I was not born in the United States.

Words to live by: "It is as if I am indebted to - I don't know to whom - to thinking responsibly. I am in a situation of trying to learn to whom, finally, I am responsible." (Jacques Derrida)

Hometown: Missoula, MontanaMajor: BBMB (Biophysics, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology)

Interests/pleasures: biking, skiing, hunting

Best travel experience: Killam vs. Fulbright hockey game in Ottawa.

What people don't know about me: My favorite season is fall.

Words to live by: Git 'r done.

Hometown: San Francisco, California

Major: Film and Media Studies

Interests/pleasures: Language learning, astronomy, reading, writing, filmmaking, karaoke, blogging, badminton, contemplating about the meaning of life

Best travel experience: Whitman Summer Studies in China - Yunnan

What people don't know about me: I aspire to learn fluent Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese.

Words to live by: "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

Hometown: New Bedford, Massachusetts

Interests/pleasures: Being a writer who doesn't write and a reader who never has time to read; alternatively, dogs and keeping my ears warm

Best travel experience: A night on the town in Aberystwyth, Wales

What people don't know about me: I wrote a book! I'm still editing it, though.

Words to live by: "Faithless is he who says farewell when the road darkens." - J.R.R. Tolkien

Hometown: Olympia, WashingtonMajors: Spanish, Philosophy

Interests/pleasures: Creative writing, foreign languages, drawing, animals

Best travel experience: the walk from the Blue Mosque to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul

What people don't know about me: I keep a detailed dream journal.

Words to live by: "Let the beauty of what you love be what you do." -Rumi

Hometown: Granby, ColoradoMajor: Chemistry

Interests/pleasures: oatmeal, coffee, socks

Best travel experience: saving a trapped donkey in Spain

What people don't know about me: I consider all squirrels to be my arch nemeses.

Words to live by: "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."

Hometown: Monte Sereno, CaliforniaMajor: Biology

Interests/pleasures: Sharks, hiking, brains

Best travel experience: Nine hours in New York

What people don't know about me: Eating ice cream as a full meal is acceptable at all hours

Words to live by: "All things grow."

Hometown: Long Beach, California

Major: English

Interests/pleasures: Beach volleyball, languages, films, books, music (whatever, whenever)

Best travel experience: reading Ulysses aloud in Dublin with a bunch of Irish seniors

What people don't know about me: I write reminders on my hands every day.

Words to live by: "to hate/is an easy lazy thing/but to love/takes strength/ everyone has/but not all are/willing to practice" - Rupi Kaur

Hometown: Seattle, WashingtonMajor: Biology-Environmental Studies

Interests: Ultimate Frisbee, birding, raising meat rabbits

Best travel experience: floating the Tiputini River in the Amazon rainforest during my sophomore year abroad

What people don't know about me: I started college as a dairy science major.

Words to live by: "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." - Neil deGrasse Tyson

Hometown: Lafayette, CaliforniaMajors: Biology, German Studies

Interests/pleasures: Walks in pretty places, crochet, coffee, books, fruit, "Star Trek"

Best travel experience: adventures in New Zealand

Words to live by: "Connect."

Hometown: Seattle, WashingtonMajor: Anthropology

Interests: reading, especially murder mysteries or anything macabre; drawing; new places; new and weird foods.

Best travel experience: hitching a ride on a tractor in Chile or encountering a family of howler monkeys while hiking along Colombia's Pacific Coast

What people don't know about me: I love to collect new words. I have sticky notes and old receipts with new words littering my purse and every drawer.

Words to live by: "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken." - Oscar Wilde

Hometown: Palo Alto, CaliforniaMajor: Biology

Interests/pleasures: hiking, skiing, gardening

Best travel experience: backpacking in Kings Canyon National Park, California

Hometown: New YorkMajor: Environmental Studies- Politics

Interests: Environmental policy, climate action, environmental education, and all things energy!

Best travel experience: Going to Montreal with two of my best friends over winter break on the coldest week of the year. All we had was a bulk pack of Hostess pink snowballs, a newly-rented Ford Fiesta, and a semblance of a plan.

What people don't know about me: I'm addicted to Cherry Pepsi and country music.

Words to live by: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -MLK

Hometown: Boulder, ColoradoMajor: Gender Studies

Interests: Since being in Austria, I have tried slam poetry, partner ballroom dance classes and reporting on the radio.

Best travel experience: I loved seeing Venice during the high water and dancing in the flooded Piazza San Marco to the live orchestral music.

What people don't know about me: My room has a chandelier with glass fruit on it!

Words to live by: "Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open."-Albus Dumbledore

Hometown: Corvallis, OregonMajor: BBMB

Interests: Cross-country skiing, Russian language, and musical theater

Best travel experience: For winter break, I stuck around in Kazakhstan. It was a break chock-full of skiing, curriculum development, and exploring downtown Almaty's vibrant nightlife.

What people don't know about me: My age! Some of my students are my age, or even older. I try not to reveal that.

Words to live by: There's an interesting Russian equivalent to our "no pain, no gain," that goes: "without effort, you can't even pull a fish out of the pond."

Hometown: San Carlos, CaliforniaMajor: Biology

Interests: Gelato, yoga, coffee, guitar, and new languages

Best travel experience: Volunteering at an animal rescue sanctuary in Costa Rica

What people don't know about me: I love spending time in airports

Words to live by: "I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it" - Pablo Picasso

Hometown: Danville, CaliforniaMajor: Environmental Studies-Biology

Interests: Plants and baseball

Best travel experience: Can't go wrong with couchsurfing.com

What people don't know about me: Six toes on my left foot

Words to live by: Defense wins championships

Hometown: Redmond, WashingtonMajor: Biology

Interests: Being outside as much as possible

Best travel experience: Watching thunderstorms roll over the mountains of New Mexico

What people don't know about me: I have yet to find a fruit I don't like

Words to live by: If there is anything you can do to help, do it even if you think it is too small to make a difference

Hometown: Vista, CaliforniaMajor: Biology and Spanish

Interests: bike touring, backpacking, skiing, photography, and flying

Best travel experience: Solo biking 4,558 miles from Astoria, OR to Yorktown, VA on the TransAmerica Trail

What people don't know about me: I love any and all forms of melodic percussion

Words to live by: "The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun." -Christopher McCandless

Hometown: Salt Lake City, Utah Major(s): Studio Art and Psychology

Interests: You can find me scaling mountains, skiing, and scuba diving. I love art of any form, but especially painting. I also enjoy strumming on my guitar.

Best Travel Experience: In Malaysia I got tattooed by the Iban people of Sarawak. My tattoo is the bundas terong: an eggplant flower containing the rope of life (a spiral). Iban men are given this tattoo when they leave on their berjalai (walk), to explore the outside world.

What people don't know about me: I love to dance. While in Malaysia I'm trying to learn traditional dances as well as dance to some live music at a good watering hole.

Words to live by: You can do anything you want, just make sure you help others.

Hometown: San Francisco, California

Major: Psychology

Best travel experience: backpacking across Europe by myself

What people don't know about me: I can't drive, swim or ride a bike

Words to live by: "Your silence will not protect you." -Audre Lorde

Hometown: Mill Valley, California

Interests/pleasures: Running, climbing, reading science fiction

Best travel experience: Semester abroad in Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo

What people don't know about me: I can't watch horror movies because I get too scared.

Words to live by: "If we were supposed to talk more than we listen, we would have two mouths and one ear." (Mark Twain)