April 10, 2003
Students get help in scholarship effort
First there was Dawn Hewett. Then came Matt Alexander and then there was a third, Jasmin Weaver.
The three UW students were selected as Mitchell Scholars in three consecutive years — a sure sign that the University has become a major player in the increasingly competitive race for prestigious fellowships and
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Dawn Hewett |
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Jasmin Weaver |
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Matt Alexander |
But the UW’s success in competing for the Mitchell is particularly noteworthy. No other public institution has had that kind of success in competition for the award that annually gives 12 students a free year at one of nine universities in Ireland and Northern Ireland, an $11,000 stipend and an invaluable experience.
“You have no idea how difficult that is,” Mona Pitre-Collins, the director of the UW’s Undergraduate Scholarship Office, said in reference to the three Mitchells. “First of all we were absolutely thrilled when they got the interviews. Then to have them selected not only the first year and the second year, but then a third year — it was just absolutely incredible.”
Pitre-Collins re-energized the UW’s Undergraduate Scholarship Office when she came to campus from Seattle University in 2000. The longtime adviser realized, shortly after her arrival, that one full-time employee wouldn’t be enough to get the job done. She now gets part-time help from Nicole Fazio, a staff employee who also works for the Undergraduate Research Program.
The two team up with a committee of faculty and staff on campus to select the institution’s nominees for various scholarships and fellowships, then help the students through the application process and finally prepare them for the rigors of interviewing for the Rhodes, Marshall, Mitchell and other awards.
Hewett, who now studies at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs, says it’s an effective program and a necessary one if the UW is to continue competing on a national scale.
“I honestly don’t know if I’d have gotten the scholarship without their help,” Hewett said. “I think most students who get these sorts of national scholarships do have help. Without that infrastructure and institutional support, I think it would be really unlikely that someone would win.”
The process begins by identifying potential award winners early. In fact, some students are introduced to the idea of prestigious fellowships and scholarships at a freshman orientation. The earlier they start thinking about the awards, the better their chances, Pitre-Collins says.
“The student who walks onto this campus and says, ‘You know, I’ve got four, maybe five, years to get myself ready to do something.’ Those students who hit the ground running and especially those students who really are aggressive in talking with faculty, in meeting people, those are the students, we find, that are just ripe for these kinds of experiences.”
It’s also imperative, she says, that they show leadership beyond the classroom. Maintaining near-perfect grades is crucial. In fact, a minimum 3.7 grade-point average is a virtual requirement for all of the prestigious awards. But the successful applicant, she says, will have applied that classroom experience in some way that makes it real and demonstrates leadership ability.
Students on this campus, Pitre-Collins says, have plenty of those opportunities. She points to the student government organization — the Associated Students of the University of Washington — as a good arena for students to get relevant experience outside of the classroom and to develop leadership skills. Vronsky served as the ASUW legislative liaison in Olympia and Weaver is a former ASUW president.
The committee considers such experiences along with academic record and sifts arduously through all of the talented candidates before deciding on the institution’s nominees for the various awards. Then the real work begins. Many on the committee have insights that can help the students craft a successful application. Brian Reed, for example, is a big help because of his relatively recent experience as a Rhodes scholar who also won but declined a Marshall scholarship.
James Quitslund, a visiting lecturer in the Jackson School of International Studies, serves on the committee. Like Reed he is a former Rhodes Scholar. Another committee member, Peter Rhines, from Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences, was a Marshall Scholar. Other committee members include Ana Mari Cauce, psychology, Bradley Portin, education, Michael Hechter, sociology, Mary Callahan, Jackson school, and Kim Johnson-Bogart, the assistant dean for undergraduate education.
A student at Harvard when he won his Rhodes and Marshall in 1992, Reed, an assistant professor in English, also served on a fellowships committee at Stanford while pursuing his Ph.D. He has also screened Rhodes applicants at the state level for Utah and Oregon.
“What I can bring to the process is to help level the playing field,” Reed said. “I know what sort of resources Harvard has. I know what Stanford does. Harvard has a fellowship center that is an entire building unto itself, whereas Mona is doing this incredible job in one little corner of Mary Gates Hall.”
The nerve-racking experience of interviewing for a Rhodes is fresh in Reed’s mind. He choose to interview in his home state of Kentucky — applicants can choose between interviewing in the state where they attend school or their home state. Typically they choose the state that gives them the best chance of advancing. Two nominees from each state move on to a regional screening process.
The process involves a reception and dinner party and an interview at the state level. If that’s successful it’s followed by another reception and dinner and more interviews at the regional level just a couple of days later. Reed characterized the process as “some combination of the fascinating, the surreal and the tension-producing.” During one of the gatherings, for example, he met someone who talked about doing aerobics with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
“It’s a moment when you see how talented and incredible everyone else is. People don’t intend to spend the entire time in this sort of competitive jostling, but it happens.”
Another important part of the process is the personal statement. Reed says the assignment is almost invariably a good opportunity for students at a point of transition in their lives to take the time to think through their values and their motivations.
“Rarely does one get a chance to do that in any sort of concentrated fashion,” he said. “We’ve had people go through that process and decide not to apply because along the way they’ve realized it doesn’t make sense for them to go to Britain for two years now, that it will in fact end up being a detour.”
More often though, with the help of Reed and others on the committee, students craft documents that include a recent anecdote from their life that gives the fellowship selection committee a better understanding of the nominee. In Hewett’s case Pitre-Collins was a critical sounding board as she wrote the statement.
“It helped to have some fresh eyes review the application,” she said. “Mona was good at helping frame the essays, what should be included and how to best capture what I was doing at the UW. I was at her office so much, I know people probably thought I worked there.”
But working closely with the students is just part of the job, Pitre-Collins says. The brightest students may be exceptional within their respective academic fields, but understanding the scholarships and fellowships process is another matter entirely.
“There are few students who could think of all of this on their own,” Pitre-Collins said. “Instead, they think, ‘Am I good enough for this?’ And they are. They just need a little push from us. We make sure they know they’re not going to be by themselves through this process.”
