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WELLESLEY,
Mass. -- Two Wellesley College students have been awarded
2004 Gilman Scholarships for study abroad. They are two
of the 173 winners of 990 applicants for the spring term
awards.
Julia
Meade of Tiffin, Iowa, and the daughter of James
and Hannelore Meade, is a junior double majoring in French
and biology. Meade won her award for study in the Wellesley
Aix-en-Provence in France program. She is studying French
culture and history as well as the development of French
medicine.
"I want to work with multinational groups such as
the World Health Organization or Doctors without Borders
to provide medical relief all over the world," said
Meade, noting that travel abroad helps build language and
other skills. "Studying in France also fulfills my
personal goal of better understanding other cultures. I
want to learn how to interact with people who don't automatically
hold the same beliefs I do."
This summer, Meade's international study continues. She
has received a service opportunity stipend from Wellesley
to work in India, volunteering at an orphanage in Chennai.
She also has earned a Wellesley Club of France scholarship
for thesis research on parallels in diseases throughout
history, specifically how AIDS and tuberculosis are seen,
stereotyped and treated.
Mona
Williams, a junior from Memphis, Tenn., and the daughter
of Landu Williams, is using her Gilman Scholarship in a
spring term program in Senegal, Africa, focusing on the
country's arts and culture. She also will continue her
study abroad in Senegal this summer, though the Balch Internship
from the Wellesley Peace and Justice studies program.
"I have always had a strong desire to travel to Africa," Williams
said. "My mother is from the Democratic Republic of
the Congo and she has told me stories about her country
and Africa for some time. … (But) as strong as my
mother is, she could not preserve nor could she replace
the part of my culture that is perhaps the most important:
the people."
Through
the School for International Training, Williams lives
alongside the Senegalese people. SIT seminars are
teaching her the social and political history of Senegal, "thus
widening the lens through which I view politics and the
role that it plays in the development of a nation."
Her
goals include living and working abroad in the future,
possibly in a French-speaking country like Senegal. At
Wellesley, she has been political action chair of the student
group Ethos, through which she organized a trip to the
March for Affirmative Action to Washington in April for
40 Wellesley students. President of Nubian, another student
group, she has a strong interest, she said, "in serving
the community of African descent at Wellesley and outside
Wellesley."
Since 1875, Wellesley College has been a leader in providing
an excellent liberal-arts education for women who will
make a difference in the world. Its 500-acre campus near
Boston is home to 2,300 undergraduate students from all
50 states and 68 countries. For more information, go to
www.wellesley.edu.
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