3 seniors awarded Watson and Zeff fellowships

Two Rice University seniors are among the 43 students across the country who have been awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for 2014-2015. Colleen Fugate and Heather Olson will receive $28,000 each for a year of world travel and independent study.

Senior Ana Builes received the Roy and Hazel Zeff Fellowship, which also supports a year of world travel and independent study. The Zeff Fellowship is awarded to the Rice student who was ranked highest by the Rice Faculty Committee on Fellowships and Awards but did not receive a Watson Fellowship.

“The prestigious Watson Fellowship is highly competitive,” said Caroline Quenemoen, Rice’s director of fellowships and undergraduate research. “Colleen and Heather were selected from 150 nominees put forward by the top liberal arts colleges across the country. We’re very appreciative of the generosity of the Watson Foundation and also of Rice Professor Stephen Zeff, who endowed the Zeff Fellowship at Rice so that more students would have the opportunity for self-discovery afforded by a year of solo travel and learning around the world.”

Colleen Fugate

Duncan College member Fugate, from Columbus, Ohio, is majoring in sociology and the study of women, gender and sexuality with a minor in poverty, justice and human capabilities. She will use the Watson Fellowship to visit Ghana, Morocco, Nepal, the Philippines and Guatemala to study women’s resilience in migrant towns. She is interested in the social, political and economic transformations caused by human migration.

“I will spend my year immersed in five national contexts, collecting and documenting women’s stories of strength and resilience through both writing and photography,” Fugate said. “I first became interested in issues of women’s rights and human migration when I sponsored a refugee family from Somalia my senior year of high school. When I came to Rice, I found opportunities to foster these interests through my classes in sociology and poverty and gender studies and the many opportunities to travel, work and do research abroad.” She took a semester off to travel to Ecuador and Colombia to work with migrants and has since been engaged in activist movements in Houston and Latin America involving immigrant rights and women’s access to sexual and reproductive health care.

Fugate said that after her fellowship, she might consider graduate school or a job at a nongovernmental organization that focuses on women’s and/or migration issues. “I don’t want to make any concrete plans for after my Watson year because I feel like the fellowship experience will be incredibly transformative and may redirect my goals and aspirations for the future in terms of the kind of job I want or what I want to study in graduate school,” she said.

Heather Olson

Wiess College member Olson, from Grayslake, Ill., is a philosophy major who plans to explore inner-city community gardens in Denmark, India, Nepal, Japan, Australia and Brazil.

“In recent decades, food contamination scares, climate change and uncertain energy politics have intensified the interest in gardening worldwide,” she said. “In the cities that I visit as a Watson Fellow I will investigate all aspects of the establishment, maintenance and preservation of community gardens by speaking with gardeners, community leaders, organizations and city officials. I am interested in the ways people enact visions for the future, solve problems and resolve conflict around community space. Exploring cities on foot, I will see what frustrates and inspires gardeners and discover the individual innovations that imbue the city with character and life.”

During her senior year of high school, Olson worked on an organic farm and was interested in sustainable agriculture. She said she became interested in urban community gardens through the Community Gardens class at Rice and her work with the nonprofit organization Urban Harvest. She helped launch the Real Food Revolution, a student club that focuses on local and sustainable food for Rice. She credited the Parish Fellowship offered through Wiess College for developing her confidence to travel alone in a foreign country when she visited South Africa to explore the contemporary art scene there.

Olson said that after her Watson Fellowship, she plans to build up inner-city community gardens in Chicago or Los Angeles through the nonprofit sector, and she might pursue an art degree focusing on public arts as it relates to urban community space and food.

Ana Builes

Baker College member Builes, from Sugar Land, Texas, is majoring in French studies and policy studies with a minor in poverty, justice and human capabilities. She will use the Zeff Fellowship to visit Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, Ethiopia and Rwanda. “I chose these countries because they are representative of the major regions of coffee production and will provide a global perspective on coffee farmers,” she said.

Originally from Medellin, Colombia, Builes said coffee has always been a big part of her cultural history. “As both a coffee enthusiast and a student of social justice, I want to explore how global issues, such as indigenous rights, women’s empowerment and fair trade, unfold within coffee cooperatives,” she said. “Through the digital storytelling tools of narrative, video and photography, I will also capture the untold stories of coffee growers and share them in a blog throughout the year.”

Builes said her education at Rice has provided “incredible opportunities” to explore minority rights and immigrant issues internationally. For example, she received a Susan McAshen Summer Service Research Grant that enabled her to go to Nepal to work with a women’s knitting cooperative and an orphanage. Last summer, through Leadership Rice’s Summer Mentorship Program, she did research on minority rights at a leading French think tank. She’s currently teaching a student-taught course on the history of coffee across the world and how international issues like indigenous rights, fair trade and women’s empowerment are associated with coffee production. “I want people to realize how the consumption of everyone’s favorite brew affects people across the world,” she said.

After her Zeff Fellowship, Builes plans to attend law school and hopes to one day start her own coffee cooperative inspired from the lessons and stories she will gain from her fellowship.