This year Oberlin students achieved greater success in fellowship programs than ever before. For the second consecutive year, an Oberlin student won a Marshall scholarship, after it hadn’t been given to an Oberlin student since 1995. This year 10 Obies have been recommended for Fullbright scholarships, something that has also never occurred in the College’s history until now.

The Marshall Fellowship program is a program paid for by the British taxpayers in order to bring the brightest American students to Great Britain for two years.

“The good thing about the Marshall program is that it selects about 40 scholars from all areas,” said Carol Sedgwick, the Health Careers Advising coordinator.

The program chooses between a number of recent graduates from all over the country.

“They assume that their scholars will be future leaders,” Sedgwick said. “They look for intellect and character.”

Last year’s recipient, neuroscience major Chris Macklin OC ‘04, won the first ever Marshall/National Institute of Health graduate partnership scholarship and is completing a project with both Marshall Fellowship for two years in Great Britain and with the NIH in the U.S.

“This year we had four people apply for Marshall and we had another winner in a row,” Sedgwick said.

Mary Larew is a Conservatory senior. Last year she directed a medieval Latin music drama as her Winter Term project, on which she later based her application for the fellowship program. According to Sedgwick, that made Larew a very compelling candidate for the Marshall scholarship.

“She taught people Latin, how to sing with the style from that time, did the sets,” Sedgwick said. “I have no doubt that she will be a leader in the field of early music.”

Larew said that she had been wanting to do a production in Latin since her first year and once she had done it, she realized she wanted to direct for the rest of her life and the scholarship seemed like the perfect way to do this.

“I will spend the first year [of the scholarship] studying early singing techniques with John Potter, who is director of the vocal studies program at the University of York,” Larew said.

She will spend her second year working on a project with Potter as her advisor.

Larew and last year’s recipient, Macklin, are very close friends. Currently Macklin is studying memory at the physiology department of University College in London and in his free time is singing and taking part in jazz choir as well as a church choir in London.

The other fellowship program in which Oberlin students have always achieved great success is the Fulbright program. It is sponsored by an international corporations, that gives out one-year scholarships to graduate students from all over the world. What is different about it is that every country makes its own decisions about what area they will provide scholarships for and in which fields they will accept applications for.

“We have been participating in Fulbright forever,” Sedgwick said. “Every year students from Oberlin apply to it, but what’s different is that this year, out of 20 people who applied, we have 10 who were recommended.”

Once recommended, the finalists’ applications have to be sent to the host countries, who also make their selections. Once their applications are approved, they will be recipients of the scholarships in the fields they applied.

“I decided to apply for a Fulbright because it gives me a unique opportunity to do a year of intense scholarship on a specific subject that I find fascinating, without committing me to a time-consuming and narrowly-tracked Ph.D,” said one of the applicants. 

“The Fulbright teaching assistantship gives students the opportunity to get experience in the classroom as an English TA and to do independent research,” said senior Susan Albright, a finalist for the scholarship. “I thought that was a great combination.” 

There are two major programs for which Oberlin students apply and receive Fulbright scholarships. One is the teacher assistant program and the other one involves a project on which the applicant wants to work.

Senior Annelies Fryberger applied for a teaching position in Martinique, a French-speaking island in the Carribean, where she went to do research for her honors project.

“I applied for the Fulbright teaching assistantship fellowship program because I knew I wanted to take a few years before I went to grad school,” she said.

Another senior-finalist said she would like to go back to Italy, where she spent a semester abroad.

“Federally subsidized study abroad seemed like a great idea, and a good opportunity to explore areas that I find interesting but either do not have the time to study at Oberlin, or are unavailable here,” she said.

The project she applied for involves studying anthropology and semiotics at the University of Bologna and doing some research on graffiti and youth cultures in Bologna and Naples.

Senior Lidia Arshavsky is also applying for a teaching scholarship in France.

“As someone who is interested in a career in interpretation, I need to strengthen my language skills before applying to masters programs in conference interpreting,” she said.

Junior Monica Lee applied for TA in a German high school.

“I wanted to take a year off before grad school and thought the scholarship was a good opportunity to travel and explore while staying academic.”

College senior Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer also applied with a unique project following a semester abroad that she really enjoyed.

“I applied for a Fulbright to Japan to conduct sociological/anthropological research on two minority groups, Zainichi Koreans and Brazilian Nikkeijin,” she said. “I am interested in the historical and current treatment of minorities in Japan as well as the impact increased immigration will have on the country. My broader interests include questions of national identity, assimilation and ethnic resistance in Japan.”

This year’s program is the most successful in Oberlin’s history.

“To have 10 people recommended is the highest we have ever had,” Sedgwick said.

One thing that is essential in the application for the fellowship programs is that the process is started as soon as possible. There are a vast amount of programs for postgraduate studies that Oberlin’s office of career services offer, but people need to know that they have to begin working on their applications during their junior year.

“The fellowship programs are looking for something really special,” Sedgwick said. “Maybe it will be GPA, maybe some really interesting project, but the more enthusiastic students are the people who will have most luck.”

The time to start thinking about applying would be now, she added. Anyone interested in applying should contact the Student Academic Services office and also make contact with the person listed as faculty representative for the particular program they are interested in.

“Students who work with our office stand a better chance,” Sedgwick said. “Even for people who don’t win, the process for applying can be very helpful, to think about what you want to do, where you want to go. Very often people apply for something else and since they have already gone through the process it is easier.”