College Nominates Four Seniors for Watson

Last week, while the presidential candidates were still campaigning, Oberlin nominated four of its graduating future leaders for a chance to compete for the Watson Fellowship, a fully-funded year of travel and independent study.

Out of 39 applicants, the four chosen nominees were seniors Emily Fowler, Daniel Kimmel, Stefan Kamola and Adam Kowit.

Upon discovering she had received a nomination, Fowler said, "I just started running around the Conservatory like a freak."

The Oberlin Watson Fellowship committee chose the nominees after careful examination of a five-page project proposal and an interview with the committee, consisiting of six professors from a variety of fields. Now that the four students have been nominated, they must wait until mid-March to find out if they have received the fellowship.

The Watson is a travel fellowship that gives recent graduates $22,000 to go abroad for a year of independent study. Tori Haring-Smith, the executive director of the Watson Foundation, has stated that the fellowship's namesake, the founder of IBM, wanted to find the people who will make a difference in 20 years and challenge them in their youth.

The nominated projects spanned various disciplines. Fowler titled her proposal "Violin Improvisation in Contemporary Europe." After she "let my imagination run wild," the Alberta native found her topic. The violin major wants to study "different facets of improvisation," such as jazz in Paris, gypsy music in Hungary and fiddling and early music in northern Europe.

Kimmel, a neuroscience and biology major, titled his project, "HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa: Representations, Attitudes, and Public Health." The Maryland native wants to visit South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Kenya in order to study "people's perceptions of the disease." He plans to view the disease by "associating with groups, such as the infected, family members, clinicians and researchers."

Kimmel also plans to study the disease through photography - his own and others - in order to examine perceptions of HIV/AIDS. Kimmel's interests in photographic representations of illness and mental health, along with an interest in African philosophies and the ancestral past, led him to apply for the Watson.

Kowit, who is currently spending the semester in London, wants to study food and food writing. He said he is, "exploring the different ways people form relationships with food, because I think the individual relationship between a person and her food is at the heart of larger conceptions of cuisine and culinary identity." The English major/religion minor included travel to Italy in his proposal.

Kamola, a classics major who was unable to be reached, titled his proposal, "Voices of the Land: Sound Mimesis in Tuvan Throat Singing."

Considering the competition the nominees will have over the next months, they will need some luck. Expository writing professor Laurie McMillin, the Watson liaison for the College, said the increasing number of applicants over the past few years has made the decision process harder.

She said there was an "incredibly strong pool of candidates" this year. A past Watson fellow herself, McMillin said applying for the fellowship is often a clarifying process, allowing seniors to really figure out what their dreams are. "Of course, if you figure out what your dream is and then [have] the committee say 'no,' it is sometimes heartbreaking. But it helps to realize that the fellowship is an amazing gift - and not a right."

The foundation website states that the fellowship is an "opportunity for a focused and disciplined Wanderjahr of their own devising a period in which they can have some surcease from the lockstep of prescribed education and career patterns in order to explore with thoroughness a particular interest."

The nominees have the chance to become one of 60 students, out of 200 applicants from 50 colleges, to receive the fellowship.