Smadar Bakovic, a senior English major at Bates College, will discuss Arab perspectives on the historic mistrust between Arabs and Jews, at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9, at Temple Shalom Synagogue-Center, 74 Bradman St., Auburn. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

An Israeli army veteran from Neve Illan, Bakovic knows the Middle East conflicts well. She believes mutual understanding is key to a resolution the region’s problems.

Supported by a Phillips Student Fellowship that funds cross-cultural projects undertaken by Bates students, Bakovic first visited the Israeli Arab coastal village of Arara in 2001, using video and film to chronicle stories of locals with video and film in an effort to understand non-Jewish cultures of Israel.

“I went into places where Jews do not go and talked with hardworking people,” Bakovic says – villagers who told her, “not a lot of people want to hear what we have to say.”

Bakovic conducted further interviews during summer 2002 and returned to Bates last fall to produce a book-length manuscript about her research, under the direction of Israeli scholar Mishael Caspi, visiting professor of religion.

For more information about the presentation, call the synagogue at 207-786-4201. Refreshments will be served.

The 2002 Phillips Student Fellows at Bates are: Caitlin Cook, a junior from Long Beach, Calif.; Sarita Fellows, a sophomore from Natick, Mass.; Taiki Kubota, a junior from Madrid, Spain; and Julia Plumb, a first-year student from Nobleboro, Maine.

Ranging this year from $4,000 to $7,000, Phillips Student Fellowships support students who design exceptional international or cross-cultural projects focusing on research, service-learning, career exploration or a combination of the three. Projects must involve substantial immersion in a different culture.

The best Phillips Fellowships are challenging and transformative experiences for the students who undertake them. The Fellowships are supported by an endowment established through the bequest of Charles Franklin Phillips, fourth president of the College, and his wife, Evelyn M. Phillips.

Cook’s project is titled Legacies of Inhumanity: Oral Histories of Jewish Refugees in Mexico City. A history major, Cook will continue her studies of the Holocaust and its aftermath by researching the experiences of Jews who fled Nazi-dominated Europe for Mexico. She will contact Jewish community members through Tribuna Israelita, an organization in Mexico City, and will conduct and interpret approximately 15 interviews.

For The Traditional Clothing of Nigeria, Fellows, an art major, will build a portfolio focused on the contemporary-traditional dress worn by middle class urban women in Nigeria. She will make photographs and drawings, collect fabrics and discuss production techniques to expand the resources of the Bates Theater Department in West African clothing and to deepen her own understanding of the meaning of traditional dress in contemporary Nigerian society.

Kubota’s project is called Self-Evaluation and Social Perception of Biracial Youth in Japan. A student of psychology, Kubota will explore the experiences of biracial young adults, with one Japanese parent, who live in Japan. He will address issues of identity and “Japaneseness,” and will compare the experiences of his subjects with his own experiences as a Japanese Colombian growing up in Colombia and Spain.

In her Study of the Bombarde and Breton Folk Culture in Brittany, France, Plumb will examine a traditional Breton musical instrument, the bombarde, a folk relative of the oboe. A folk fiddler and student of ethnomusicology, Plumb will study the instrument and attend a wide range of events throughout Brittany in which it is featured.

The Phillips Student Fellowships, along with the Phillips Faculty Fellowships and Phillips Professorships at Bates, are part of the Phillips Endowment Program, an ambitious initiative of awards, honors and opportunities funded by a $9 million endowment bequest to the college from former Bates President Charles F. Phillips and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips, in 1999.

Diana Shaghayegh Sepehri, a Bates College senior born in Iran and now a resident of Sacramento, Calif., has received one of 60 prestigious research fellowships awarded this month by the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Program. Sepheri, a pre-med student at Bates, is a double major in mathematics and biology, with a minor in Spanish. She won a $22,000 Watson Fellowship to research the lasting influence of the ancient Persian empire on the folk medicine of four countries: Turkey, India, Egypt and northwestern China, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (or Eastern Turkistan).

The Watson Fellowship is intended to identify potential leaders and challenge them in ways that foster independence, a global perspective and adaptability to unfamiliar cultures. It funds a year of study focused on a topic of deep importance to the recipient and conducted outside both the formal academic environment and the recipient’s home culture.

Sepehri’s year of Watson-funded study, which begins in August, will precede her entry into medical school. Her research proposal evolved from an earlier project, funded in part by a Phillips Student Fellowship and a Hoffman-Mellon research grant from Bates and conducted in summer 2001: a survey of traditional medicine in Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. This project led to a career goal of eventually combining Western and traditional approaches to medicine in her own practice.

“I realized I would never be able to just do one or the other,” Sepehri says. “I have high expectations and high respect for Western scientific medicine. But also I find so much information and so much beauty and validation in the traditional medicine of many ancient cultures.

“I feel that if they’ve been around for 2,000 or 3,000 years, if they’ve had those traditions and they have worked, it is silly if we just completely ignore them because they are not what we call Western medicine.”

Sepehri’s connection to traditional medicine came through a folk-medicine course she took in Quito, Ecuador, during a junior semester in the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin Off-Campus Study Program. (The teacher of the course, Dr. Edgardo Ruiz, is a private physician in Quito who will spend a week this spring lecturing at Bates.)

Sepehri was surprised by the many commonalities between the practices explained in the course and home remedies her grandmother had used half a world away in Tehran. Ultimately this personal connection led her to a deeper consideration of her own background and to the Watson proposal.

Ecuador had a second key impact. As a community service project, Sepehri worked as a nursing aide in a Quito hospital. That work showed her, she says, that “I’d love to be a doctor. I’d love to be able to help and heal people.” Hence a second career goal: to spend part of every year providing medical care to underserved people in urgent need through an international organization such as Doctors Without Borders.

Fifty selective private liberal arts institutions nominated nearly 1,000 students for this year’s Watson Fellowships. At least one Bates student (and as many as three) has received a fellowship every year since 1985.

A program of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, of Providence, R.I., the Watson Fellowship was established in 1968 by the wife and children of Thomas J. Watson Sr., the founder of IBM.

“We look for extraordinary young men and women of extraordinary promise, individuals who have the personality and drive to become the leaders of tomorrow,” says Norvell E. Brasch, executive director of the fellowship program. “The program is designed to fund the most creative dreams of our fellows with a minimum of restrictions. The world is their canvas and we let them tell us how they want to paint it.”

A dean’s list history major, Stodolsky work at Bates includes a concentration in East Asian studies and a minor in Russian. Before being awarded the Beinecke Scholarship, Stodolsky received an Albion Morse Stevens Award for his work in foreign language and a Hoffman-Mellon grant in support of teaching English and studying Russian in Russia.

Stodolsky, recently named a 2001 Phillips Student Fellow at Bates College, will receive a grant of up to $10,000 supporting a summer research project for which he will travel to Sarejavo to conduct an oral history project interviewing Bosnian Muslims who were children and teenagers during the Bosnian War. He will also explore the relationship between war and cultural identity and investigate the myth of “ancient hatreds” used to explain longstanding conflicts in the region.

“During my Bates Fall Semester Abroad in Croatia, we had an expedition to Sarajevo, and even though this beautiful city was under siege for 1,395 days – the longest military siege of modern history – the whole world had watched day after day for four years and had done nothing,” Stodolsky says. “Nevertheless, the people of Sarajevo were very hospitable and warm toward us.” Stodolsky believes studying a contrast between experience and attitude will be interesting and rewarding. “My greatest passion is to communicate with different cultures,” he says. Bates has allowed him to do that, he says. “I was able to travel to some of the most interesting and complicated regions of the world, from Siberia to Sarajevo.”

The Phillips Student Fellowships provide major funding to students who design exceptional international or cross-cultural projects focusing on research, service-learning, or career exploration, or some combination of the three.  Projects must involve substantial immersion in a different culture. The Phillips Student Fellowships at Bates are part of the Phillips Endowment Program, an ambitious initiative of awards, honors and opportunities for faculty and students funded by a $9-million endowment bequest to the College from former Bates President Charles F. Phillips and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips, in 1999.

Bates College junior Jason Surdukowski of Concord, N.H., a double major in studio art and political science, has been named a 2001 Harry S. Truman Scholar, one of 70 students nationwide to receive a $30,000 scholarship awarded on the basis of leadership potential, intellectual ability and the likelihood of “making a difference.”

The 70 scholars were selected from among 592 candidates nominated by 303 colleges and universities. Each scholar will receive $3,000 for the senior undergraduate year and $27,000 for two or three years of graduate study. Those selected must be committed to careers in government or the not-for-profit sector. “I am humbled by the faith the Truman Foundation has expressed in my potential to live a life of active public service,” Surdukowski said. “The graduate work that the scholarship supports will bring me another step closer to my goal of working to ‘make gentle the life of this world.’”

Surdukowski hopes to complete M.A. and J.D. degrees and pursue a career that includes international law and public office. An art critic for The Bates Student, the campus newspaper, and president of The Representative Assembly, Bates’ student government, Surdukowski is planning a senior thesis that relates the discourse of law to the reality of genocide. A show of his work that focuses on human rights issues will travel to Amherst and Swarthmore colleges this year. The Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport recently selected two of his pieces for display it its 2001 exhibit “The Next Generation.”

Surdukowski’s artistic expression often reflects his political concerns. “My art is one kind of activism for me,” he said. “Art is a power, a bully pulpit, a concentrated and strong discourse.” When Surdukowski won a Humanity and Action Foundation Fellowship to study human rights and the Holocaust in Holland last summer, he immediately knew that his required outreach project would be artistic. “Art is the way I can most concretely reach people,” he explained. Surdukowski is a 1998 graduate of Concord High School.

Fine, who is majoring in a self-designed interdisciplinary program “Faith/Spirituality and Social Justice” at Bates, will engage in a personal retreat at the Kopan Buddhist Monastery in Boudhanath, practicing Buddhism and attempting to understand how Engaged Buddhism and Jewish Buddhism deviate from their original traditions. She is seeking to understand what is drawing Jews to seek fulfillment in Buddhism and, in a larger sense, why Westerners are espousing Buddhism over traditional Western faiths.

Phillips Student Fellows each receive grants of up to $10,000 for summer projects in service-learning, career exploration, research or some combination of the three in international and other culturally distinct settings. The Phillips Student Fellowships, along with the Phillips Faculty Fellowships and Phillips Professorships at Bates, are part of the Phillips Endowment Program, an ambitious initiative of awards, honors and opportunities for faculty and students funded by a $9-million endowment bequest to the college from former Bates President Charles F. Phillips, and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips, in 1999.

The Phillips bequest is believed to be the largest gift ever from a U.S. college president and spouse to his or her institution. The Phillipses, longtime Auburn residents, officially served Bates from 1944 through 1966; Charles F. died in March 1999 just months after the death of Evelyn M., his wife of 65 years.

Also named 2000 Phillips Student Fellows are Sze Wei Ang ’01 of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Kathryn Dutille ’01 of Lebanon, N.H.; Kristin Hines ’02 of East Granby, Conn.; John Daniel Lichtman ’02 of Woodbridge, Conn.; Christian McTighe ’02 of Delmar, N.Y.; John Minor ’02 of Wilmington, N.C.; and Mindy Newman ’01 of Atlanta, Ga.

Fine, a dean’s list student at Bates, is president of the college’s New World Coalition and an active member of Bates’ Environmental Coalition. A 1999 graduate of Scarsdale High School, she is the daughter of Joel and Adele Fine of Rye Brook, N.Y.

Minor, a mandolinist and violinist who is majoring in geology and minoring in philosophy, plans to study Ghanaian drumming and strings to mingle the sounds of the mandolin ‹ and his own understanding of European music ‹ with the sound and rhythms of traditional Ghanaian drumming. Ultimately, he hopes to gain a more informed understanding of African musical heritage. He will undertake home stays in Accra, Kumasi and Cape Coast, and will study drumming at the University of Ghana at Legon.

Phillips Student Fellows each receive grants of up to $10,000 for summer projects in service-learning, career exploration, research or some combination of the three in international and other culturally distinct settings. The Phillips Student Fellowships, along with the Phillips Faculty Fellowships and Phillips Professorships at Bates, are part of the Phillips Endowment Program, an ambitious initiative of awards, honors and opportunities for faculty and students funded by a $9-million endowment bequest to the college from former Bates President Charles F. Phillips, and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips, in 1999.

The Phillips bequest is believed to be the largest gift ever from a U.S. college president and spouse to his or her institution. The Phillipses, longtime Auburn residents, officially served Bates from 1944 through 1966; Charles F. died in March 1999 just months after the death of Evelyn M., his wife of 65 years.

Also named 2000 Phillips Student Fellows are Sze Wei Ang ’01 of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Kathryn Dutille ’01 of Lebanon, N.H.; Margot Fine ’03 of Scarsdale, N.Y.; Kristin Hines ’02 of East Granby, Conn.; John Daniel Lichtman ’02 of Woodbridge, Conn.; Christian McTighe ’02 of Delmar, N.Y.; and Mindy Newman ’01 of Atlanta, Ga.

A Dana Scholar and dean’s list student at Bates, Minor is an officer of the Bates College Outing Club, in charge of cabins and trails. He also is a member of the Crosstones, Bates’ coed a capella group, and the Bates College Ultimate Frisbee Club. He studied the geology of Maine’s seacoast by kayak in a spring 2000 Short Term unit and “Environment and Environmentalism,” a 1999 Short Term unit in Utah.

A 1998 graduate of Cape Fear Academy, Minor is the son of Dr. Gill Minor of Charlottsville, Va., and Pamela Minor of Gainesville, Fla.

Phillips Student Fellows each receive grants of up to $10,000 for summer projects in service-learning, career exploration, research or some combination of the three in international and other culturally distinct settings. The Phillips Student Fellowships, along with the Phillips Faculty Fellowships and Phillips Professorships at Bates, are part of the Phillips Endowment Program, an ambitious initiative of awards, honors and opportunities for faculty and students funded by a $9-million endowment bequest to the college from former Bates President Charles F. Phillips, and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips, in 1999.

The Phillips bequest is believed to be the largest gift ever from a U.S. college president and spouse to his or her institution. The Phillipses, longtime Auburn residents, officially served Bates from 1944 through 1966; Charles F. died in March 1999 just months after the death of Evelyn M., his wife of 65 years.

Also named 2000 Phillips Student Fellows are Sze Wei Ang ’01 of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Kathryn Dutille ’01 of Lebanon, N.H.; Margot Fine ’03 of Scarsdale, N.Y.; Kristin Hines ’02 of East Granby, Conn.; John Daniel Lichtman ’02 of Woodbridge, Conn.; Christian McTighe ’02 of Delmar, N.Y.; and John Minor ’02 of Wilmington, N.C.

Newman, a 1996 graduate of Woodward Academy, is the daughter of Stuart L. Newman, 2885 Arborwoods Drive, Alpharetta, Ga., and Vicki Einhorn, 454 Ansley Walk Terrace, Atlanta, Ga.

Ang, an English and Chinese major at Bates, plans to study how urbanization, mandatory non-indigenous education and the desire of the Malaysian government to assimilate the Orang Asli into Malay culture threaten the cultural integrity and heritage of the Orang Asli. Ang will collect oral histories among the Semai tribe in the northern state of Perak, under the auspices of the Center for Orang Asli Concerns.

Phillips Student Fellows each receive grants of up to $10,000 for summer projects in service-learning, career exploration, research or some combination of the three in international and other culturally distinct settings. The Phillips Student Fellowships, along with the Phillips Faculty Fellowships and Phillips Professorships at Bates, are part of the Phillips Endowment Program, an ambitious initiative of awards, honors and opportunities for faculty and students funded by a $9-million endowment bequest to the college from former Bates President Charles F. Phillips, and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips, in 1999.

The Phillips bequest is believed to be the largest gift ever from a U.S. college president and spouse to his or her institution. The Phillipses, longtime Auburn residents, officially served Bates from 1944 through 1966; Charles F. died in March 1999 just months after the death of Evelyn M., his wife of 65 years.

Also named 2000 Phillips Student Fellows are Kathryn Dutille ’01 of Lebanon, N.H.; Margot Fine ’03 of Scarsdale, N.Y.; Kristin Hines ’02 of East Granby, Conn.; John Daniel Lichtman ’02 of Woodbridge, Conn.; Christian McTighe ’02 of Delmar, N.Y.; John Minor ’02 of Wilmington, N.C.; and Mindy Newman ’01 of Atlanta, Ga.

A dean’s list student student at Bates, Ang is a member of the varsity squash team, Sangai Asia and the college’s International Club. A graduate of SM Bukit Bandaraya, Ang is the daughter of Julie Tan and Ang Tian Phin of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Phillips Student Fellows each receive grants of up to $10,000 for summer projects in service-learning, career exploration, research or some combination of the three in international and other culturally distinct settings. The Phillips Student Fellowships, along with the Phillips Faculty Fellowships and Phillips Professorships at Bates, are part of the Phillips Endowment Program, an ambitious initiative of awards, honors and opportunities for faculty and students funded by a $9-million endowment bequest to the college from former Bates President Charles F. Phillips, and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips, in 1999.

The Phillips bequest is believed to be the largest gift ever from a U.S. college president and spouse to his or her institution. The Phillipses, longtime Auburn residents, officially served Bates from 1944 through 1966; Charles F. died in March 1999 just months after the death of Evelyn M., his wife of 65 years.

Also named 2000 Phillips Student Fellows are Sze Wei Ang ’01 of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Margot Fine ’03 of Scarsdale, N.Y.; Kristin Hines ’02 of East Granby, Conn.; John Daniel Lichtman ’02 of Woodbridge, Conn.; Christian McTighe ’02 of Delmar, N.Y.; John Minor ’02 of Wilmington, N.C.; and Mindy Newman ’01 of Atlanta, Ga.

Dutille, a dean’s list student at Bates, has served as a junior adviser and participated in a service-learning project at the Little Blessings Day Care center. A member of the Bates women’s varsity basketball team, Dutille was named to the Maine All-Rookie team in 1997-98 and has been named Player of the Week and Rookie of the Week by the Eastern College Athletic Conference.

A 1997 graduate of Lebanon High School, Dutille is the daughter of James and Cynthia Dutille, 231 Meriden Road, Lebanon.

Through a program sponsored by Florida Atlantic University, Hines, an environmental studies major, will study the ways in which residents of Salango and Rio Chico conceptualize, organize and use local ecological systems. Her goal is to understand how indigenous environmental knowledge informs subsistence practices in coastal Ecuador.

Phillips Student Fellows each receive grants of up to $10,000 for summer projects in service-learning, career exploration, research or some combination of the three in international and other culturally distinct settings. The Phillips Student Fellowships, along with the Phillips Faculty Fellowships and Phillips Professorships at Bates, are part of the Phillips Endowment Program, an ambitious initiative of awards, honors and opportunities for faculty and students funded by a $9-million endowment bequest to the college from former Bates President Charles F. Phillips, and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips, in 1999.

The Phillips bequest is believed to be the largest gift ever from a U.S. college president and spouse to his or her institution. The Phillipses, longtime Auburn residents, officially served Bates from 1944 through 1966; Charles F. died in March 1999 just months after the death of Evelyn M., his wife of 65 years.

Also named 2000 Phillips Student Fellows are Sze Wei Ang ’01 of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Kathryn Dutille ’01 of Lebanon, N.H.; Margot Fine ’03 of Scarsdale, N.Y.; John Daniel Lichtman ’02 of Woodbridge, Conn.; Christian McTighe ’02 of Delmar, N.Y.; Jesse Minor ’02 of Wilmington, N.C.; and Mindy Newman ’01 of Atlanta, Ga.

A Dana Scholar at Bates, Hines has been involved with the college Outing Club and a volunteer at Lewiston’s Trinity Soup Kitchen. A 1998 graduate of East Granby High School, Hines is the daughter of Charles P. Hines of Salisbury, Conn., and Karen W. Hines of Oradell, N.J.