Read more about Simone Schriger’s plans for her Watson year.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\nA program of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the Watson Fellowship supports a year of international exploration in any field for graduating college seniors “of unusual promise.” Each fellow is awarded $28,000 for 12 months of travel as well as college loan assistance as applicable and an insurance allowance.<\/p>\n
Recipients come from select private liberal arts colleges and universities across the U.S. This year\u2019s 43 recipients were selected from a pool of nearly 700 candidates overall and 150 finalists.<\/p>\n
Growing up along the North Shore of Long Island, Kennedy says, “it’s hard not to interact with seaweed — definitely my first experience with seaweed was probably just throwing it at my siblings.\u201d<\/p>\n
But through his Bates studies and other experiences, including a 2013 internship with Maine\u2019s marine algae and aquaculture industries, he developed a fascination with the broad potential of seaweed and other algaes in food and fuel production.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat fascinates me in economics is the interface between industry and natural resources,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Schriger plans to research the practice of donating human body parts and products: specifically, breast milk, hair, blood and kidneys. She will travel to India, South Africa and Costa Rica to understand differing motivations for \u201cparting with one\u2019s parts\u201d and the cultural contexts that affect those motivations.<\/p>\n
In her interviews with people involved in myriad ways with corporeal donations, she will also investigate attitudes toward the commodification of these goods. \u201cThere’s a global network of these parts,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that I’m trying to figure out is how that has changed and how much our view of it, as something that’s pretty normal, is representative of others’ understanding of it in different nations and cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Kennedy and Schriger credit their time at Bates as key to their success at competing for the Watson.<\/p>\n
Guidance from psychology faculty was crucial in helping prepare Schriger for a successful Watson application. \u201cThe individual attention they provided was instrumental in developing confidence and independent working habits,\u201d Schriger says.<\/p>\n
Kennedy found that feedback and support from the Watson Fellowship Committee at Bates was invaluable as he honed his application. And, he adds, \u201cOne thing that Bates really has taught me to do is to just take my own initiative and go with that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so easy to get to know the professors and other people who can help you make something happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Simone Schriger and Brian Kennedy have won highly competitive Watson Fellowships, awarded to seniors of “unusual promise” for a year of international travel and research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":77275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[11011,44],"tags":[3117,7227,11055,9160],"class_list":["post-77158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awards","category-enewsletter","tag-economics","tag-psychology","tag-student-awards","tag-watson-fellowship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77158"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77283,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77158\/revisions\/77283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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