Ingrid Olivia Norrmen-Smith ’13. Photograph by Michael Bradley/Bates College.

A 2013 Watson Fellowship will make it possible for a Bates alumna to spend a year in Africa and Asia researching cultural perceptions of one of humankind’s leading causes of death and disability.

A double major in neuroscience and French who graduates in May, Ingrid Norrmen-Smith of Upper Montclair, N.J., has received the Watson to support research that will explore how people in Morocco, Madagascar and Cambodia regard strokes and stroke victims.

“Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability around the world, but there isn’t a lot of literature regarding how different cultures perceive it” — even though a better understanding of such cultural perceptions could mitigate the global impact of strokes, says Norrmen-Smith, who goes by her middle name, Olivia.

“Your brain is an incredible organ that defines you, and when you have an affront to that organ, so much is changed. The effects are so personal — how people deal with disability, trauma and concepts of self, all of these different things.”

She adds, “I believe that as a Westerner, I stand to learn something valuable about how stroke victims are treated elsewhere. It may be that victims in other cultures are respected and revered, not stigmatized, and that life post-stroke is more fruitful because the support system that exists is more robust.

“I am just so happy that the Watson Foundation recognized this project.”

Awarded only to graduates of 40 highly selective liberal arts colleges, the Watson is one of the nation’s most prestigious graduate fellowships. The $25,000 fellowship is designed to identify potential leaders and challenge them in ways that foster independence, a global perspective and adaptability to new cultures. It funds research on a topic deeply important to the recipient and is conducted outside academe and the recipient’s home culture. Learn more.

“My project has two components,” says Norrmen-Smith. “One is to discern on a grand scale how stroke is perceived, and that will be accomplished via a questionnaire” completed by ordinary citizens in the destination country.

“But then I will also have personal interviews with stroke patients or people close to them.”

Norrmen-Smith has reached out to leading researchers in each country for assistance in finding stroke patients to interview and in administering the questionnaires. The questionnaires will combine basic demographic questions with scenarios depicting people afflicted in different ways by a stroke — physical, emotional and mental.

“It will be fascinating to see if disparate deficits evoke different responses,” she says. In addition, she will ask how participants would feel if a family member was experiencing stroke symptoms and what interventions the participant would take.

“Those could include options such as seeking medical help or religious advice, or whether the participant would intervene socially, pursue an exorcism, not seek help, etc.”

Although the cultures of Morocco, Madagascar and Cambodia differ in many ways, Norrmen-Smith suspects that religion will be a prime factor in shaping perceptions of stroke. She takes her lead from research into cross-cultural perceptions of mental illness that points to religion as a major determinant.

Morocco is predominantly Muslim, Cambodia primarily Buddhist and Madagascar is roughly divided between Christianity and faith practices indigenous to the island. But despite her expectations about religion’s role, “who knows what I will find?” Norrmen-Smith says. “That’s what’s intriguing.”

Norrmen-Smith first became interested in stroke while working as a volunteer and intern in New Jersey hospitals during the past several years. At the Overlook Medical Center in Summit, she conducted surveys of stroke patients and attended stroke-support group sessions.

She parlayed this experience into a project for the trauma hospital at University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, in Newark, where she created a stroke awareness brochure that has been adopted by the neurology department and disseminated through the city’s medical establishment.

At Bates, Norrmen-Smith may be better known for her stage presence than her neuroscience research. She has sung with a variety of campus bands, including the a cappella Crosstones, and has also acted in plays.

“It’s the nature of a Bates student to be doing things that he or she is passionate about and to be overcommitted — in a good way,” she says. “People are really involved with things. I think Bates is a very happy place and that has influenced my experiences here.”

Romina Istratii, who graduates from Bates in May, will use the award to travel to Senegal, Ghana, Ethiopia and Rwanda to research the dynamics of food security, gender bias and the role of women in farming.

The Watson is designed to identify potential leaders and challenge them in ways that foster independence, a global perspective and adaptability to new cultures. It funds research that’s on a topic deeply important to the recipient and is conducted outside academe and the recipient’s home culture.

Video: Romina Istratii ’12 at the Mount David Society Scholarship Luncheon, March 30, 2012:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Istratii belongs to the 44th class of Watson recipients, drawn from 15 states and seven countries and planning research in 74 countries. Fellows receive $25,000 for 12 months of travel, college loan assistance as needed and an insurance allowance.

Istratii’s research proposal is titled “Meeting the ‘Voiceless’: Understanding How Women Can Transform Food Insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa.” Although women far outnumber men as farm workers in many African countries, gender bias and male dominance of economic and societal institutions constrain women farmers’ opportunities for advancement.

“This situation contributes to persistent food insecurity,” Istratii writes in her Watson proposal. At the same time, while existing research demonstrates the role of gender bias in putting women farmers at a disadvantage, the voices of such women are all but absent in that research, a void that Istratii hopes to address.

She will interview women farmers, academic experts and women’s rights activists. “I am intrigued to hear African women narrate their own stories and share their own perspectives,” she writes.
“The literature shows that women are crucial to food stability, but it fails to project what women think and how they see their role as forces of security and economic growth.

“Do women consider themselves equal to men? Do they feel that more egalitarian circumstances on the farm could increase the welfare of the household and the community more broadly? Do they associate their personal circumstances with food insecurity? What would they say to their governments and the extension agents that work to empower them?”

Istratii selected her destinations on the basis of unique characteristics that will inform her career objective of ameliorating food insecurity in Africa. In Senegal, she will live with a village mayor who will introduce her to the region and to female farmers, and will visit a U.S. Agency for International Development project that aims to increase female producers’ access to markets.

Next stop is Ghana, where female voices are conspicuously absent from the masses of research into food insecurity, and where members of the Bates economics faculty have been able to connect her with valuable interviewees.

In Ethiopia, Istratii will study agricultural practices in the relatively egalitarian context of the Oromo people, the nation’s single largest ethnic group. In addition to female farmers, she will interview civil rights activists, women’s empowerment organizations and journalists.

Her last stop is Rwanda, where women have been instrumental in rebuilding the country after the 1994 genocide, and where important reforms that empower women have recently been enacted. Those reforms, Istratii believes, “will have tremendous implications for food insecurity and must be studied while they are still under implementation.”

Romina Istratii of Athens, Greece, shown here speaking during the October 2012 dedication of two academic buildings at Bates College, is a Bates senior recently awarded the prestigious Watson Fellowship. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Born in Moldova, Istratii immigrated to Greece at age 4. Experiencing poverty early on, her response then and now has been to seek ways to make things better on a community scale. At Bates, she says, she found not only a responsive forum for her ideas but a community that encouraged action.

“Excellent knowledge, supreme leadership skills and bright minds might provide the world with better ideas,” she says, “but only true personal engagement with other peoples’ problems can provide the world with forces of change.”

As head of the Committee on Women’s Rights for the Model United Nations at Bates, Istratii first learned of the barriers confronting women farmers in Africa. Participating in research by Bates and University of Tennessee economists, and supported by a Stangle Family Fund Grant for Research in Economics and Law from Bates, she laid the groundwork for the Watson project.

Istratii is a triple major in economics, politics and Chinese. Along with Chinese, English and her native languages of Greek and Moldovan, she also speaks French.

The Thomas J. Watson Foundation was created in 1961 as a charitable trust by Mrs. Thomas J. Watson Sr. in honor of her late husband, the founder of International Business Machines (IBM). In 1968, in recognition of their parents’ longstanding interest in education and world affairs, their children decided that the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Program should constitute a major activity of the foundation.

At least one Bates senior received a Watson Fellowship every year from 1985 through 2000. Bates students or graduates also received Watsons in 2002-03 and 2006-09.

With the ultimate aim of teaching contemporary drama in her native Sri Lanka, a Bates College senior has received a 2009 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study performance arts in South Africa and Indonesia. Sulochana Dissanayake of Pita Kotte, Sri Lanka, is one of 40 recipients of the 2009 fellowship, a $28,000 award supporting a year of independent research abroad.

What Dissanayake learns during her Watson year will support her ambition of creating a theatrical practice that brings social and political issues to Sri Lanka’s rich performance traditions. She hopes to “establish an institution that provides the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in theater and the performing arts,” Dissanayake explains.

Khoa Pham, a Bates College senior from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, has received one of 50 prestigious research fellowships awarded by the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Program.

Pham, a double major in economics and politics, won the $25,000 Watson Fellowship for a research proposal titled “Exploring Global Vietnamese Youth in Search of Identity.”

Pham’s Watson year, which will begin in August, will allow him to spend approximately two months each in France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Russia, Japan and Australia, where he will live and interact with Vietnamese youth. Interested in similarities and differences between the Vietnamese students in different countries, he hopes to answer the questions, “What creates these differences and commonalities? Was it because of the Vietnam-U.S. war; the culture, society and politics of the host countries; or simply the way we were raised and educated?”

The Watson Fellowship is designed to identify potential leaders and challenge them in ways that foster independence, a global perspective and adaptability to new cultures. It funds research, conducted outside the formal academic environment and the recipient’s home culture, into a topic deeply important to the recipient.

Pham intends to gain a more informed sense of how the global community of Vietnamese youth relates to Vietnam, and, more importantly, develops creative ways in which its members can contribute to Vietnam’s future growth. “In the end,” he says, “all this will help me understand my own identity better and become more ‘globally conscious.’”

Pham emphasizes that Bates has offered him extraordinary support for ideas and projects, as well as ample opportunities in terms of networking and funding to explore his passion. “Whenever I came up with an idea,” he says, “no matter how ‘weird’ it may have sounded, the response from the people at Bates I sought support from has always been, ‘Let’s make it happen.’”

Though hard to quantify exactly, he says, a large part of the inspiration for the Watson project stems from the nourishment provided by Bates. Pham places this experience in cultural context: “I was mostly educated in Vietnam, where rote memorization and finding answers, though certainly deserving some merit, are disproportionately more important than analytical thinking and asking questions.”

At Bates, he says, “I learned to think creatively, question assumptions and take advantage of all available resources to ‘make it happen.’ While all of these qualities might be taken for granted in the United States, they are indeed a privilege for someone like me. ”

Joined by Trang Nguyen ’07 of Hanoi, Vietnam, and with financial support from Bates, Pham established a forum called VietAbroader in 2005. The program supports Vietnamese students studying in the United States and helps other Vietnamese students who want to study here. Linking students at home and abroad, VietAbroader has organized seminars in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The program has attracted support from other U.S. colleges and Vietnamese businesses.

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. The 50 Watson recipients this year were selected from 179 finalists nominated by the colleges and universities they attend.

At least one Bates senior received a Watson Fellowship every year from 1985 through 2000, and in 2002, 2003 and 2006.

Amanda Harrow has pursued her interest in child-protection policy and practice through an internship with the Massachusetts Department of Social Services and through her Bates senior thesis, which has examined interventional approaches to domestic violence through service-learning work at the Abused Women’s Advocacy Project, Lewiston.

For her Watson Fellowship research year, which begins this summer, “in each country I’m looking at a different aspect or a different player in the realm of protecting kids,” Harrow explains.

In New Zealand, she will research family counseling practices adapted by the state from the customs of the indigenous Maori people.

In Peru, she will look at the role played by nongovernmental organizations in child protection and adoption, as well as residual effects on domestic violence rates from the long war against the Shining Path insurgency.

In Uganda, Harrow will investigate how various religious organizations function in the child-protection role and how AIDS has affected traditionally resilient family structures. Finally, in Sweden, she plans to examine the correlation between the robust state welfare system and low rates of child abuse.

Harrow is also one of two recipients of Bates’ 2006 William Stringfellow Award in Justice and Peace, bestowed in March. An organizer of the New World Coalition and the Women’s Resource Center, and a member of the Bates Emergency Medical Services board, Harrow has been active in various social justice groups in Lewiston-Auburn. She has worked extensively to promote gender equality and redress the consequences of inequality through her work with the Abused Women’s Advocacy Project, the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women and RAINN, the national sexual assault hotline.

The Watson “is really amazing, and it’s an honor,” Harrow says. “I’m really excited, and I’m definitely slightly terrified,” she adds with a laugh.

Two Bates College seniors are among 50 students across the country to receive 2006 Thomas J. Watson Fellowships, $25,000 grants that support a year of independent research abroad.

The Bates recipients are Amanda Harrow of Hopkinton, Mass., and Andrew Stowe of Wallingford, Conn.

Harrow’s research project, titled “Keeping Kids Safe: Strategies for Protecting Children from Abuse,” will take her to New Zealand, Peru, Sweden and Uganda, where she will investigate a variety of cultural and institutional approaches to child protection.

For “Life on the Wing: Traveling Pole to Pole with the Arctic Tern,” Stowe will spend a year following the global migration route of this sea bird, working to expand scientific knowledge of the species and examining how it is affected by environmental policies in countries along the way.

The Watson Fellowship is designed to identify potential leaders and challenge them in ways that foster independence, a global perspective and adaptability to new cultures. It funds research, conducted outside the formal academic environment and the recipient’s home culture, into a topic deeply important to the recipient.

For both Stowe and Harrow, the Watson affords an opportunity to pursue research interests instilled by their parents. A psychology major at Bates, Harrow is the daughter of Sheryl MacGowan Harrow, Bates class of 1975, and Ed Harrow. The Harrow family has supported 24 foster children, a practice that sparked Harrow’s interest in child-protection issues. (Click here to read more about Harrow’s Watson research.)

In recognition of her social justice activities at Bates and in the community, Harrow was also named this month as one of two recipients of Bates’ William Stringfellow Award in Justice and Peace.

Stowe’s parents, Lawrence and Helen Stowe, are dedicated birdwatchers who passed this interest along to their two sons. (In fact, the couple met through a birdwatching course.) The arctic tern “is one of the most incredible species of birds,” Stowe explains. (Click here to read more about Stowe’s Watson research.)

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. The 50 Watson recipients this year were selected from among 176 applicants nominated by the colleges and universities they attend.

At least one Bates senior received a Watson Fellowship every year from 1985 through 2000, and in 2002 and 2003.

The Thomas J. Watson Foundation this year considered 184 candidates nominated by 49 private, liberal arts colleges noted for their quality and commitment to undergraduate education. The Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Program seeks to recognize individuals who demonstrate integrity, strong ethical character, intelligence, the capacity for vision and leadership and potential for humane and effective participation in the world community.

For Frederick, the $22,00 award will support a year of travel and research in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Peru, China and Egypt to investigate the way past cultures understood time, the way they performed experiments and measurements related to astronomy and the models they constructed of the universe. Frederick, a physics major at Bates, plans to repeat several experiments that were pivotal to changes in astronomical thought, from antiquity to the present. Through her experiments and interviews, she hopes to understand the evolution of astronomical models and learn more about the origins of our present models.

“With the Watson Fellowship, I, too, can commence upon a journey that will lead me to ponder the significance of the cosmos,” Frederick said. “I anticipate that this experience will fill me with an appreciation for the unsung creators of astronomy and lead me to question the origins of our current ideology.”

A dean’s list student, Frederick has created and completed independent studies on the science of radio and robotics at Bates. During the summer after her junior year, she worked in the University of Michigan Space Physics Research Laboratories on a rocket payload intended to study hydrogen emissions from Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. This work inspired her independent senior thesis at Bates on attitude control systems of spacecraft.

For Noyes, the $22,000 award will support a year of travel and research in Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan to investigate the complex relationship between landscape, spirituality and visual aesthetic of rural Himalayan people. As he travels, Noyes, a studio art major in painting at Bates, plans to create a collection of photographic and mixed-media images that will be composed into a book. Noyes will juxtapose specific local detail, such as regional embroidery and icons, with his own photographic, painted and drawn images of the mountains, indigenous people and local botany.

Among the questions guiding Noyes’ work will be how traditions of visual aesthetics grounded in the mountain landscape of rural Himalayan people are reflected in Buddhism, how the marks of development and Western influence among geographically remote Buddhist cultures influence their relationship to the landscape and what common myths and misperceptions about these mountain cultures have been created as a result of increased contact with the West.

“I tried very hard to design a project that reflected my personal and spiritual interests and also spoke genuinely about what it means to me to be an artist,” Noyes said. “Throughout the application process, I mostly just tried to be myself as much as possible, so receiving the Watson Fellowship really feels like a wonderful affirmation of the life that I’m living.”

During a sophomore year leave from Bates, Noyes studied art at University of Tasmania School of Art in Hobart, Australia, where he focused on painting, printmaking, film, drawing and digital imaging. He also learned traditional Maori bone carving techniques and created several art works based on his observations of the New Zealand landscape. At Bates, Noyes has been a dean’s list student, a member of the Ultimate Frisbee and the men’s ice hockey teams and a cast member in the Theater at Bates productions of “The Twin Menaechmi” and “Twelfth Night.”

Bates history professor Dennis Grafflin, the Thomas J. Watson liaison officer for Bates and the chair of the college’s Watson Committee, said that the fellowship program, now in its 32nd year, “is unique in its concern for giving recent college graduates an opportunity to develop an interest anywhere else in the world, outside the framework of academic or occupational responsibilities. It is the most long-term sort of investment in human capital, seeking to expand its fellows’ sense of their own capacities as people who will lead and change the world.”

Frederick, a 1996 graduate of Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, is the daughter of Dr. Robert A. and Dr. Arlene W. Frederick of Columbia, S.C.

Noyes, a 1995 graduate of Judge Memorial High School, is the son of Dr. Robert D. Noyes of 376 Crestline Circle, Salt Lake City, and Dr. Linnea S. Noyes of 204 Canyon Road, Salt Lake City.

The $16,000 award will support a year of travel and research in Peru, Ecuador and Mexico during which Henault plans to study tropical forest plant products as a sustainable source of income. A devoted conservationist, Henault is interested in exploring how conservation strategies affect the individuals most dependent on the rain forest.

The Thomas J. Watson Foundation this year considered 179 candidates nominated by 50 small, private, liberal arts colleges noted for their quality and commitment to undergraduate education.

Bates biology professor Sharon Kinsman, who has served as Henault’s thesis adviser, described her as “a remarkable young person.” Kinsman cited Henault’s “committed interdisciplinary and international view, her extraordinary eagerness to learn and live, her senses of fun, of wonder, of moving onward. She inspires me,” said Kinsman.

A native New Englander who graduated from Holy Cross (Waterbury, Ct.) High School, Henault plans to gather evidence of plant harvesting, processing and marketing. “I am interested in strategies incorporating biological, economic and scientific reasons with cultural sensitivity,” says Henault, who spent a junior semester abroad studying the use of land and labor in the banana industry in Belize. Her course work and field work there broadened her scientific inquiry of plants to include the areas of economics and human ecology. “It’s important to investigate all the elements,” Henault says. “It’s exciting stuff.”

Henault will culminate her Bates career by spending the month of May in Costa Rica as part of a Bates Short Term unit focused on biological conservation and community service. Short Term is a five-week year-end session at Bates during which students enroll in a single course. Many of the Short Term units involve off-campus research.

Following her graduation in late May, Henault departs for Ecuador to undertake her Watson Fellowship project.

A dean’s list student and a Dana Scholar, Henault was president of the Freewill Folk Society from 1993-94. She is the daughter of Rosemary Henault of 342 Wooster St., Naugatuck, Ct.

Bates history professor Dennis Graflin, the Thomas J. Watson liaison officer for Bates and the chair of the college’s Watson Committee, said that the fellowship program, now in its 28th year, “is unique in its concern for giving recent college graduates an opportunity to develop a deep personal interest anywhere else in the world, outside the framework of academic or occupational responsibilities. It is the most long-term sort of investment in human capital, seeking to expand its fellows’ sense of their own capacities as people who will lead and change the world.”