This in from Professor Joshi, our university's faculty Watson coordinator. Last year three UPS students were awarded Watson Fellowships, which is an extraordinarily high number, including PG major Zorba Leslie. Read on:
Please announce in your upper division classes the following two informational meetings for students who are interested in applying for the Watson Fellowship this year:
Wed, Sept 12, 4-5:30 pm in Wyatt 208
or
Thurs, Sept 13, 5:30-7 pm in Wyatt 208
Any interested students are welcome to attend, although given the timeline, this meeting will likely be most pertinent to seniors who are considering applying this year (the deadline is Fri, Oct 5th). For juniors and other lower-division students, I run several additional meetings in the spring.
A Few Words about the Watson Fellowship: The Watson is a highly competitive and prestigious national fellowship that provides students with a $25,000 grant to pursue a year of travel outside the United States. Fellows develop innovative projects that take them to diverse locations to address what are often highly idiosyncratic interests (e.g.: kite building and flying, communities with lake monster myths, retracing Darwin’s Beagle journey). Watson does not support "library" or research projects; instead, the foundation is interested in students who demonstrate curiosity and independent thinking and in projects that develop a young person’s self-reliance and interpersonal skills. Consequently, students who are successful can be but are not necessarily "A students"; they are always bold and original thinkers and very resourceful. The program is highly selective not only in the students it picks, but also in the roughly 50 colleges it invites to participate. Puget Sound has been a "Watson school" since 1992 and we have been extremely successful in those years with one or two winners almost every year since 1994, and three in 2006-7. This is a unique opportunity for our students, one they are fortunate to have available to them because they attend UPS.
Please take a few moments to announce these informational meetings in your classes. And if you or your students have any questions about the program, please do not hesitate to contact me at pjoshi@ups.edu.
Many thanks,
Priti Joshi
