This article is the second in a series on the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, its creation, its students and their research. This article begins to spotlight the heart of the program: the scholars themselves and those who would have been.
Over Intersession, while senior Annelise Pruitt pursued Anton Chekhov's theater from Moscow to Tokyo, senior Sam Permutt had his girlfriend translating Spanish for him on an island off Puerto Rico, although after two years of traveling, it was "probably the most substantial stuff I've done," he reflects.
The 95 active Woodrow Wilson scholars on campus are an eclectic group. They have been accepted into a prestigious fellowship that gives them thousands of dollars to do almost anything they want, but most of the similarities stop there. Most applied as high school seniors and arrived on campus with $10,000 waiting for them. Others applied as rising sophomores for $7,500, and some, in fact, didn't apply at all.
The fellows embrace the freedom of their fellowship, but they talk of agonizing over finding a topic and balancing research with school. They love their work, but they murmur of struggles to find an advisor in a mentor system that is "so grey," says Pruitt, especially in the humanities and social sciences. "No one has any expertise in my areas," says Permutt, whose humanities project has evolved five times since his freshman proposal. He says the program has high standards but weak guidance.
Most aren't too clear as to what projects their peers are pursuing. Others have an idea, and frankly aren't too impressed with what they hear at the casual pizza lunches. Senior Matt Sekerke says he feels that Wilson scholars waste their money in "75 - 80 percent of the cases" and that many projects are endeavors in poorly researched "amateur psychology." He says students travel prematurely without enough preliminary research.
At the end of four years, some say that the program doesn't hold scholars accountable enough: After the first 10 fellows graduated in 2002, the program ended the required 20 minute oral presentation and fellows now need only attend an April poster session in the Glass Pavilion.
"Woodrow Wilson sometimes gets a bad rep from people who take advantage of all the freedom we are given," says junior fellow Niel Shah. He has learned a lot, including that he will not pursue research as a career. He "wasted so much time" on a first project that initially "went nowhere" but has been triumphant since narrowing his topic to students and the Tokyo economic recession. He spent $5,000 during a two month internship in Tokyo last summer.
Joining the Elite
While Sekerke applied to the fellowship intent to team up with the author of an economics book he read in high school, Permutt remembers being a high school senior and his mother pulling the Woodrow Wilson application postcard out of the trash and telling him to apply. His one paragraph proposal "had something to do with the mafia in Sicily." When he got in, he says, "People in high school thought it was the coolest thing ever. You can do anything in the world, and they're cool with it."
The resounding effect is exactly what Hopkins had hoped for when it launched the program in 1999: One, to welcome undergrads to research, and two, to recruit students to Hopkins and "away from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford -- schools we usually lose to," program Director Stephen David says. About 90-135 high school seniors apply each year for 15 spaces.
Senior Melissa Floca applied to Wilson before she even applied to Hopkins. A senior now, Pruitt says she chose Hopkins over Chicago because of the fellowship. Sophomore Anna Traverse says the program finalized her decision between Hopkins and Chicago, too.Traverse, however, represents a rarer pool of Wilson entrants, however, because she was accepted without ever applying.
"As far as I know, I was chosen on the basis of my regular application, and other students who did apply to the program tend to be irked when they learn this," says the English major, who is researching art and the influence of blindness on one's world perception. "When I got my acceptance, I went back to the essays I'd written months before to figure out why on earth I was being given $10,000 to read and write. Who wouldn't be excited about the possibility of $10,000 to pursue independent interests, with so few constraints?" Junior Angela Chang was also accepted without ever applying, but thinks that her application essay about the injustices to Afghani women gained her an acceptance.
Some say that with freshman acceptance, initiative is half the battle. "I have definitely met students at Hopkins who I think would be more qualified to receive the generous fellowship, but they didn't even apply," says freshman fellow Ariel Hayes, who was inspired by the faculty mentor program.
However, while Hopkins recruits freshmen for humanities and social science fellowships, competition is increasing for the five sophomore spots. Senior Loren Dunn submitted a proposal his freshman year to study a Nobel prize-winning author, but was rejected. He skipped the application as a senior, because "I didn't think there was any chance I'd get one." However, he says that "when I got here, everyone I knew had one. It would have been cool to get."
Recruitment, Sekerke feels, is essentially the "wrong motive."Faculty suggest that sophomores often apply with tighter proposals, and many Wilsons think the program would be strengthened if the focus was less on recruitment and more on worth.
Writing Seminars senior lecturer Tristan Davies, who has mentored four Wilson scholars, says that freshman selection is a definite challenge. He helped to select freshman candidates from a pool of about 45 humanities applications, and he remembers that he "positively disliked doing that kind of job."
"It may be difficult to gauge a high school applicant's research potential with a one-page application," says senior Wen Shi, who applied as a sophomore with the help of his lab supervisor, with whom he researches breast cancer drugs. "In contrast, sophomore entrants who have a detailed research proposal have to compete for a limited number of spots and then get less money."
Current Status
The 16-page print out of the 95 active fellows and their projects is a tale of evolution. Of 28 seniors, one project still reads "Neuroscience or Neuro/Public Health joint topic." Other projects, like Sekerke's and Shi's are a mouthful of academic and medical jargon.
The first year is meant for students to adjust to college life and to find a topic -- a year that is expendable, and should not have to define a 15:5 freshman/sophomore acceptance ratio, some say . The second year, "we try to pick and court an agreeable mentor," says sophomore Angela Chen. However, at the end of last semester, two of the 30 junior fellows still had have no listed mentor. In the sophomore class, four students have preliminary titles.
Defining "Deserving"
"Effort" is a highly debatable variable. To other students on campus, the Wilson crowd seems removed from reality. "It seems like they don't do whole lot," says senior Suzie Siefert, who knows senior fellows Permutt and Jackie Chan. "I don't think there is really a reputation. Unless you have friends who are Wilsons, you would never know who's in the program or what they do with their money."
To scholars who have toiled on same project for four years, the multi-directional efforts of their peers can seem superficial and na??ve. Now a senior preparing for his presentation April 30, Sekerke joined efforts with economics professor Dr. Steve Hanke from day one, and the two have maintained what he calls a "symbiotic relationship": they have met 30 hours a week for the past three years as Sekerke pursues his research in central banking and alternative monetary regimes.
Without an oral presentation, he still worries that his poster session "won't look like much." However, he will have 7 journal articles under his belt -- some quoted by Steve Forbes -- and he is currently applying to graduate school in Economics. He will have about $7,000 unspent when he graduates.
"I, like 99 percent of my peers, had hoped to think of a research topic that applied to a foreign country so that I would have to travel," Chen says, but after flunking out of biophysics and falling in love with art history, she is staying local with commissioned mural art in Baltimore City. So far, her $10,000 rests untouched and "it's just been book work."
Through travel, fellows spend more or all of their money, but humanities students in particular covet the apparent ease of the natural science projects.
"I've often envied fellows who have specifically defined, scientific topics. But I want to show people that legitimate scholarly research can be done in English and the humanities as well," says Traverse. Every few weeks, she descends to D-Level and, like Sekerke, devotes sophomore year to reading. She will spend the first of her money on a laptop and then travel to see artwork and to do archival work "hopefully outside the U.S."
Pruitt finished most of $10,000 in Russia and Japan. After trips to the Balkans, Cuba and South Africa, Floca has also expended her budget pursing public health and the complications of water distribution.
By graduation this year, Permutt will have spent the majority of his money, too, but says that it hasn't been the key to fulfillment. Since freshman year, the New York native, who has changed his major three times, has traveled three times and agonized over finding a topic that really meant something special to him -- something which, he says, "didn't happen." He speaks often with program Coordinator Suzy Bacon, expressing his frustration. Smiling, he says of his volatile curiosity: "Suzy loves it, but it frustrates her. Now, with future plans for a dual degree in international relations and law, he says he wishes he could have devoted more of his research to career-related interests.
Do all Wilsons expend equal effort? Sekerke says "absolutely no," and he, too, speaks often with Bacon. At regular Wilson meetings, he is "absolutely horrified that people in their junior and senior year are just starting on their project." He says meetings "never really go past skin deep." Students need to critique each others' work, and the current underclassman mentorship offers superficial support at best.
Benchmarks for determining success of the young program remain subjective, and proponents for academia butt heads with those for a foundational research experience.
"Not every fellow who's graduated has does astounding work," Traverse says. "That's how research works. Diligence won't make the pieces fit together. I don't think it's [Wilson] s a joke. I think it's a young program still trying to figure itself out."
