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���߲ݴ�ý students nominated for highly selective fellowship programs were honored last week during a Merrill House luncheon.

Provost Lyle Roelofs commended the students for their interest in extending their educations and serving as ambassadors for ���߲ݴ�ý in the global community.

“It’s important for us as an institution to provide the resources for these students to pursue these kinds of rigorous opportunities,” said Roelofs. He was joined by several faculty members at the lunch, which was organized by Ann Landstrom, associate director for fellowship, scholarship, and graduate school advising for the university’s Center for Career Services, along with Kelly Snyder in the Dean of the Faculty office.

This spring two seniors were awarded the prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for a year of independent exploration outside the United States. The fellowship provides a stipend of $25,000 for no less than one year’s travel.

Gemina Garland-Lewis will be traveling to The Azores, South Africa, Brazil, New Zealand, Japan, and Norway for her project that focuses on the differences in the cultural valuing of whales within a variety of pro- and anti-whaling nations. She is interested in how countries have responded to the 1986 global moratorium on whaling in different ways.

Cecilia Sibony will be examining the mass migration of Jews from their homes in the Muslim lands of the Middle East. She will compare the Muslim perspectives on the sociopolitical circumstances of each country before and during the migration, in order to obtain a more complete picture of the factors affecting the Jewish decisions to emigrate.

She plans to visit Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Bahrain.

Students were recognized Thursday at a luncheon in Merrill House for their pursuit of fellowships to extend their studies. At lower right is Ann Landstrom, of career services.

Four seniors have been accepted so far into the U.S. Student Fulbright Program, which provides scholarships to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges.

• Jillian Ferris will be working as an English teaching assistant in Taiwan at the elementary or middle school level.

• As an English teaching assistant in Thailand, Caryn Fields will be teaching conversational English to middle and high school students.

• Julia Gooding has been awarded a Fulbright full grant for research on “Contemporary Buddhist Practice in Urban and Rural China,” affiliated with Renmin University of China.

• Colin Twomey will be traveling to Belgium where he will study the shared characteristics of swarm-based metaheuristics at the Institut de Recherches Interdisciplinaires et de Developpements en Intelligence Artificielle (IRIDIA) in Brussels through a Fulbright full grant.

The recipient of the Paul J. Schupf ’58 Fellowship is Ruben Leavitt ’08. He will read for the Master of Philosophy in Politics: Political Theory at the University of Oxford this fall.

Other national fellowship recipients this spring are Caraline Higgins ’09, who received a Goldwater Scholarship that will support her ���߲ݴ�ý education leading up to her pursuit of graduate degrees in the field of infectious diseases. Nathaniel Del Prete ’09 is the recipient of the Beinecke Scholarship, which supports graduate study in the arts, humanities and social sciences. He plans to pursue a doctorate in the classics.

“The fellowship luncheon is an opportunity to celebrate student accomplishments, and whether they are an applicant, nominee, or recipient they deserve recognition for their commitment to learning and engagement in the world around them,” said Landstrom.