Scarsdale student named Phillips Student Fellow at Bates

Margot Fine, a Bates College sophomore from Scarsdale, N.Y., has been named a 2000 Phillips Student Fellow and will receive a grant of up to $10,000 to live with a Nepali family in a rural village in the Himalayan mountains while working with the village on community development for six weeks this summer.

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.