Bowdoin students are receiving “tremendously competitive” national fellowships and grants this spring, according to Director of Student Fellowships and Research Cindy Stocks. In total this spring, 17 students won a total of 20 national fellowships that required institutional endorsement.
Lonnie Hackett ’14 was awarded both the Davis Projects for Peace and Samuel Huntington Public Service Award. Hackett is a biochemistry major who started Healthy Kids/Brighter Future, a non-profit organization working to bring medical services and health education to children in need in Zambia, at the beginning of his junior year.
“My junior year we treated about 1400 kids and trained 80 teachers,” said Hackett.
The grants will allow Hackett to scale up his organization.
“We hope to be able to screen all 10,000 children living in this compound and train 80 teachers not only on health education but also as community health workers,” said Hackett.
Sam Burnim ’14 was awarded the St. Andrews scholarship, which will awards him funding to study at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and get a masters in health systems and public policy.
“Neither one of my parents went to college—I hadn’t heard about fellowships in general until coming to Bowdoin—so it was a really awesome opportunity,” said Burnim.
Viola Rothschild ’14 received a Fulbright Study/Research Grant and will be going to China next year to look at how the local governments of the Zhejiang province and Guangzhou city are responding to the influx of African immigrants. Rothschild, whose mother is from Beijing, visited the area “quite a bit” growing up and studied in Beijing the fall of her junior year.
Sam King ’14, Duncan Taylor ’14, and Yoni Held ’14 were all awarded Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Grants. King will be working in Sri Lanka, Taylor will be located in Panama, and Held will be teaching in Bangladesh.
King studied in Sri Lanka the fall of his junior year, said that he looks forward to returning for ten months this year.
He said that when he was notified of this grant, it was “a moment of pure elation.”
Taylor similarly said he was “ecstatic—caught off guard” when he received the news earlier this week.
When he is not teaching in Panama, Taylor will work at a baseball camp for kids.
Maya Little ’15 was awarded the Critical Language Scholarship for Chinese, a full scholarship that will allow her to study in a Chinese city for two months.
“I would really like to go into academia or diplomacy after graduate school so I'm definitely very lucky to be studying through [the Critical Language Scholarship] this summer because I think it can really help me realize those dreams,” wrote Little in an email to the Orient.
Evan Bulman ’16 was awarded the Boren Scholarship for undergraduate students. He will be studying Arabic in Jordan at a Middlebury language program next year, funded by the National Security Education Program. As part of the program’s requirements, Bulman will work in the federal government in the national security area for a year after graduation.
“I was shocked but really excited. It is a big honor and I’m excited to be going to Jordan,” said Bulman.
Hannah Sherman ’15 won the Harry S. Truman Scholarship which provides juniors who have an interest in public service with funding for grad school.
“Another part is becoming part of this network of people working all over the world in different aspects of public service,” she said. Sherman is interested in working in Latin America with women, and her application for the Truman discussed starting microfinance projects to provide loans for female farmers.
Two Watson Fellowships, two Fulbrights, and one Udall Scholarship have already been awarded to students this spring.