Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Logo of The Middlebury Campus
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Two Students awarded Watson fellowship

The Thomas J. Watson Fellowship announced its 2011-2012 recipients on March 15, among whom are two Middlebury students. Austin Davis ’11 and Sarafina Midzik ’11 will begin their fellowships this summer after surviving the application process, which began with their nomination from a pool of 34 Middlebury students and concluded with their selection from a group of 160 seniors from 40 liberal arts colleges across the country.

Sarah_SopheakChheng_13-199x300


The Watson Fellowship, which began in 1968, was created to “offer college graduates of unusual promise a year of independent, purposeful exploration and travel outside the United States,” according to its mission statement. The fellowship gives each recipient $25,000 for a year of independent study outside the United States.

Successful applicants show not only “a continuity of interest” expressed over their four years said Associate Dean of the College and fellowship liaison Karen Guttentag, but also a real “personal passion associated with their project … often they are attempting to make sense of some personal core issue in a broader, universal context.”

The Watson Fellowship includes one year of travel to a country the applicant has never before visited and exploring some question or overall personal mission by living in the new communities. Once abroad, the fellows must remain abroad for the entire year — they can only come home for medical emergencies.

Once the four nominees were selected in mid-October, each candidate embarked on an intensive process of formulating a five-page personal statement and a five-page project proposal. Guttentag explained that such a process was “really a fifth class” and that the students met regularly with Guttentag and Burns to edit their proposals and personal statements. In the weeks leading up to the interviews with the Watson Foundation, the Middlebury liaisons conducted two mock interviews with each candidate to prepare them for their formal interview.

Midzik applauded “the support system at Middlebury College [that] provides for this Fellowship. Peggy Burns and Karen Guttentag have so much dedication to this program.”

Midzik’s project will be addressing “interfaith explorations of evolution across the Middle East and South Africa” in her post-graduation year.


Guttentag saw Midzik as a good candidate because of the personal passion Midzik exemplified with connection to her project. Midzik’s project is “trying to create a new model for interfaith dialogue and attempt to understand how people make sense of theories of evolution within their respective faiths,” Guttentag said. “Especially since it is something she is struggling with so personally being a Jew and a biologist, she was a very strong candidate.”

Midzik decided on her project when she was abroad in Alexandria, Egypt for seven months during her junior year. While she was there she came into contact with other science majors of faith and talked to them about the

relationship between their faith and studies.

“I have a Jewish mother and a Catholic father and I attended Quaker camp when I was younger, so I’ve always been trying to figure out where evolution fits in with my faith,” she said.

Austin Davis, the other fellowship recipient from Middlebury, also has a personal connection with his Watson project.

“My project is exploring conceptions of disability in the Middle East,” Davis said. “I’ll be meeting disability NGOs and members of the disabled community, so I’ll get to hang out with the people who are often, essentially, left behind by society.”

Austin was abroad in Egypt for two months before necessitating an emergency bi-lateral above-the-knee amputation. He has used the experience to fuel his future plans for his fellowship. Austin will be traveling to Kutar, Jordan, Indonesia or Turkey, Morocco and London.

Guttentag lauds the College for its creation of ideal Watson candidates.

“Middlebury is very lucky with having a very strong Watson culture here,” she said. “We have a culture that encourages independence and allows students to create their own project. This isn’t the first time in their careers at Middlebury where they are challenged to think outside the box and come up with their own independent study type of projects.”

Comments