In 2001, David Barlow '79 established an endowment fund to enhance study abroad for Bates students, faculty, and alumni.
While at Bates, David Barlow found his studies in the United Kingdom to be a powerful learning experience, both inside and outside the classroom. This generous gift to the College provides opportunities for Bates students to enrich their study abroad programs, to link them more closely with their academic program at Bates, and to share their experience with the rest of the campus and community. It also provides travel funds for faculty and a Bates alumnus or alumna each year.
The Barlow Alumni Travel Grant awards up to $3500 to fund travel abroad by a Bates alumnus/a involved in K-12 education who has been teaching at least five years, in support of educational and professional goals. The grant is available annually.
The 2009 recipients of the Barlow Travel Grant are as follows:
The first award went to Karalynn Gibson, who graduated magna cum laude in 2004, with a double major in Spanish and History of Art and Visual Culture. Karalynn writes, "One would imagine that, with these two focuses, I would have studied abroad. However, each semester I found myself so captivated by the courses offered at Bates that I never could tear myself away." Since graduating from Bates, she has spent the last five years teaching high school Spanish. Karalynn says she has her "dream job." She teaches Spanish at the high school which she attended as a student-- Messalonskee High School in Oakland, Maine. According to Karalynn, she decided to apply for the Barlow Grant because, "As a young Spanish teacher, I have found my lack of direct exposure to Spanish-speaking cultures to be my greatest professional obstacle." Karalynn will use her Barlow Grant to travel to Spain and Germany this summer. While in Spain, she will participate in a program at the Escuela Internacional, near Madrid, specifically for Spanish teachers. A combination of lessons and travel throughout the region will offer her exactly the training and experience she feels she is lacking. Karalynn, who will begin teaching new, upper-levels of Spanish next year, plans to use her summer travel experiences to re-vamp the curriculum. She writes, "As I consider plans for the highest two levels of Spanish, I am contemplating creating a curriculum based on life as an exchange student in a foreign country"..."and as an American who chooses to pursue residence or employment in a foreign country." Her goal is to create a "more realistic, meaningful curriculum" for her students.
Amy Hutchinson '91, a high school English teacher in Boise, Idaho, has long been interested in environmental and social sustainability. Six years ago, she began an extracurricular program to reconnect students to the land and to the food they eat (www.boiseurbangardenschool.org). Amy will use her Barlow Grant to travel to England to participate in a unique course and to do firsthand research on how individuals and local communities are rethinking their "stories" in order to mobilize for a more sustainable future. Her itinerary begins with a course at Schumacher College in Devon in south west England. The course, Valuing Diversity: Learning from ecosystems and cultures, examines the threat globalization poses to indigenous peoples and the ecosystems they depend upon. After completing the course, Amy will embark on research and visits which she has already organized. For example, she has arranged to meet with Rob Hopkins, author of the newly-released Transition Handbook – From oil dependency to local resilience, and founder of the non-profit Transition Network--whose mission is to demonstrate “how the inevitable and profound changes ahead (due to the twin crises of peak oil and climate change) can have a positive outcome.” Hopkins has agreed to meet with Amy to discuss how the over 40 Transition Town Initiatives in the UK, have begun the process of “relocalizing” their communities. This will be Amy's first visit to England, and her first trip abroad since her junior year at Bates. Amy's travel will also include visiting Stonehenge, London, Oxford and Bath; as well as hiking along the moors and the coast which feature so prominently in the novels featured in her English classes.
Read reports from the 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005 Barlow Alumni Travel Grant awardees (links at left):
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Applications are welcome from all Bates alumni.
Proposals are reviewed by a committee of faculty and the Alumni and Parent Programs staff.
Questions about Barlow Travel Grant program may be directed to Leigh Graham '82, Assistant Director, Alumni and Parent Programs at (207) 786-8255.
