![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/Images\/Bates_Magazine\/fall06\/JFISHER.jpg\")
The multifaceted Barlow Endowment supports campus exhibits of study-abroad photos. Jeremy Fisher \u201906 photographed this boy watching air force training in Sri Lanka.<\/p><\/div>\n
An environmental studies major, Caine based her senior thesis on the vicu\u00f1a, an animal with valuable wool and a potent symbolic role in the culture and economy of the Andes. The bus was bringing this Maine native to the International Vicu\u00f1a Festival, which would provide a narrative framework for her thesis.<\/p>\n
Caine immersed herself in the festival, which celebrates the species\u2019 rescue from extinction and its place in the traditional culture. She interviewed participants and took part in the \u201cchaccu,\u201d a shearing ritual that doesn\u2019t hurt the vicu\u00f1as but does\u00a0 raise good money for local development. \u201cI was part of the 2.5-kilometer-long human chain corralling the vicu\u00f1as,\u201d Caine says \u2014 one of hundreds of people who walked miles through the scrub with a rope, decorated with ribbons, that they used to herd the llama-like animals.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/Images\/Bates_Magazine\/fall06\/vic-7631-C.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Caine was able to attend the festival because six years ago, in the first year of The Campaign for Bates, David Barlow \u201979 gave $1.5 million to establish the Barlow Endowment for Study Abroad. A Barlow grant paid her travel costs from Ecuador, where she studied for six months, to Peru. No grant, no festival, Caine says.
\nShe\u2019s a good example of the real differences that the campaign is making. Totaling nearly $121 million, about a million above its stated goal, the campaign will have countless such practical, essential impacts that form the foundation for academic excellence. These range all the way up to scholarship funds that grew by $23.5 million and to a surge of faculty resources \u2014 four new named professorships, more dollars for research and sabbaticals, and pay raises that are moving Bates into the ballpark with its peers.<\/p>\n
A Bates Trustee, Barlow was inspired to make the gift after reflecting on his own study-abroad experiences in Europe and North Africa. The transcendental moment during his travels came one night in Egypt, as he perched on a pyramid at Giza and marveled at a sound-and-light show. Travel then and since has left him \u201cactively seeking exposure to new cultures, new ways of looking at things, and then embracing those aspects that resonate,\u201d Barlow says. He wanted to share that awareness with a greater number of Bates students \u2014 as well as faculty, who use Barlow funds to scout study-abroad sites, and alums who teach at the K\u201312 level.<\/p>\n
Bates\u2019 approach to study abroad is distinguished by its emphasis on individualized attention. The Barlow program supports that by helping students connect their travels with their academic work, explains Steve Sawyer, the dean in charge of study-abroad programs. When extra money will help a student reach an objective \u2014 whether the money pays for plane fare, an extended stay at the study-abroad site, or supplemental thesis research back at Bates \u2014 Barlow funds are there. In fiscal year 2006, the endowment allocated nearly $53,000 for 57 projects (plus an annual campus exhibition of photographs, including the one opening this article, taken by students during their time abroad.)<\/p>\n
As for Caine, her sound-and-light moment came on the bus. In all her time in South America, she hadn\u2019t seen a live vicu\u00f1a. But finally, through the bus window on that day in June, Caine saw her first vicu\u00f1as running through a field. \u201cIt was a very powerful experience,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThey were so beautiful and graceful, and I just got teary.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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