NCS Fellowships Help Students Explore the World

Each year, NCS awards fellowships to allow rising seniors to pursue independent study during the summer. The Class of 2018's seven fellowship recipients traveled to Ireland, Nepal, the United Kingdom, the Great Plains, and the Rocky Mountains, where they undertook a wide range of research.

At Upper School assemblies this winter, the fellows told classmates of their adventures and some of the lessons they absorbed.

 

Kimberly Tan '18 went to Nepal for a closer look at disaster-relief architecture. The country is still recovering from a massive 2015 earthquake that killed 9,000 and left countless families homeless. The Lauren Sarah Hester '87 Fellowship provided Tan with a chance to see firsthand how construction can be used to make a social impact.

 

"With humanitarian work," she said, "you need to think about culture and society: Will the changes you want to enact be suitable" for the society where the work will occur?

 

Tan came away from her first trip to Nepal "more confident of myself, more likely to take the initiative and make decisions. It also made me realize how fortunate we are. People I met took me in, shared with me what they had, shared with me about their lives. It showed me how much more generous we could be," she added.

 

Brett Pearson '18 used her Hester fellowship to examine how early instruction in math differs between inner-city London and inner-city Washington. "I've always been interested in teaching," she said, and this experience gave her "a professional atmosphere of something I'm considering for the future."

 

She found in the English elementary school some "low-cost ways" of sparking an interest in young students. Pearson also said that breaking away from texts in favor of a "real-world model for learning" caught her interest, as did the experience of being a professional.

 

"I was kind of terrified walking around London the first day, right after a terror attack. It was hard at first, but you get used to it and you get integrated into the society," Pearson said.

 

Naomi Davy '18 and Natalie Kalitsi '18 received the Koch Fellowship, which provided for their attendance at the Oxford Tradition, an academic program at Oxford University. They joined more than 400 students from around the world in studying two subjects of their choice for a month.

 

Kalitsi studied neuroscience and psychology, learning about mood disorders, retro-amnesia, and synesthesia, and also financial markets. Davy selected international law and social psychology. In the former subject, she learned alongside students from Panama, Norway, Brazil, and Jamaica.

 

They both excelled — Davy won a prize for her mock trial performance, while Kalitsi was judged tops in her markets class. But they equally enjoyed Oxford life beyond the classroom: dining, tourism, activities, recreation, Warwick Castle, and nightly lectures.

 

In reviewing her experience for her Upper School classmates, Davy joked: "We formed a Black Student Union there, we were there so long." She added, "Every day, I was making new friends, and I learned a lot about myself."

 

The recipients of the Raiser Environmental Fellowship design their own research program in the fields of environmental science, biodiversity, conservation, or the impact of environmental degradation or pollution on human life.

 

This year's fellows were Beata Corcoran '18, Ashley Cullina '18, and Vanessa Wydeven '18. Wydeven investigated timber wolf conservation and population management, field work that took her into remote areas of northern Wisconsin. Corcoran looked into the impact of fracking on groundwater quality in Colorado. She assisted an ongoing study in measuring water quality & conducted a literary review of past research. Cullina focused on how pollution has affected Irish aquaculture and marine life. Her study at University College Cork and field work found that hybrid mussels are overtaking the local population, a finding that could prove useful to Chesapeake Bay scientists and watermen, too.

 

We congratulate these fellows on their spirit of inquiry, and we look forward to hearing next school year from the 2018 fellows, including the first recipients of a new visual arts fellowship: