Beautiful Minds
Celebrating A Companionship of Learning
What began as a modest academic enrichment program
in 1992 has evolved into an institutional powerhouse
that consistently rewards creativity and intellectual curiosity.
Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, the Douglass Cater Society of Junior Fellows
gave away almost $96,000 this year in grants that support
self-directed undergraduate research and scholarship.
Washington college's twenty-first president left several physical legacies at Washington College, but none of the new buildings or campus beautification projects gave him more satisfaction than the elevated academic respectability portended by a single academic initiative. Before the end of his presidency and with a grant from The Hodson Trust, Douglass Cater established an endowed fund to create the Society of Junior Fellows, a collegium of students motivated to reach beyond the classroom to enrich their educational experience. With his typically ambitious flare, he looked to the nation's most respected institution of higher learning for inspiration. Harvard University's Society of Fellows had given a young Douglass Cater a passion for intellectual inquiry. It was a passion he wanted to share.
His proposal for a Society of Junior Fellows at Washington College was based on the experiences he had as a student at Harvard, Libby Cater Halaby, the former First Lady of Washington College, recalled during a visit to campus in April to help mark the anniversary. "His aim: to bring together the best and brightest and to create an intellectual atmosphere on campus to stimulate and inspire them and others to excel, where it is 'cool' to be a leader and lover of ideas. His vision: a place for intellectual ferment in a 'companionship of learning.'"
"To accomplish this," she remarked, "there would be a weekly gathering where you were expected to think, present papers, discuss, and with luck, discover new ideas and rush to share them. Junior Fellows would become a peer group that sets the standard for the rest of the student body and encourages leadership, always guided by high moral values... Douglass Cater believed the Society of Junior Fellows should encourage and support independent study with internships and 'other scholarly work,' limited only by your imaginations."
Yet even Douglass Cater might not have imagined the incredible breadth of projects undertaken by students during the last decade--projects that have enabled them to work at respected research institutions, to examine diverse social policies and ecosystems, to study indigenous cultures, to ask questions, to make discoveries, to challenge the status quo. Cater Fellows, for example, have worked as interns with the U.S. State Department in India and Ireland, conducted cancer research and clinical trials in neuropharmacology, attended conferences on chemistry and women's studies, interned at Rolling Stone Magazine, followed the historic path of a British schooner, and taught English to homeless children in South Africa.
Since its inception under the curatorship of economics professor Davy McCall, the Cater Society of Junior Fellows has made nearly 200 awards, worth more than $500,000. This year's crop of Cater Fellows alone was awarded grants totaling nearly $96,000. After Douglass Cater's death in 1995, his family and friends have continued to make gifts to an endowment that has grown to nearly $2 million. Most recently, family and friends have added the Sage and Douglass Cater Fund in memory of two of the Cater children. This fund will provide stipends for faculty who are overseeing Cater Fellows projects.
"There are very few small colleges that can offer this level of financial support for students' independent research and scholarship," says J. David Newell, professor of philosophy and religion who for the past three years has been the program's curator. "Yet the value of the program is much greater than the dollar amount of the grants. Their work fosters an atmosphere of intellectual exchange during weekly presentations. And these students develop such a level of maturity and self-confidence. I couldn't help but smile in amazement during Jordan Yelinek's presentation [describing his summer research project spent assessing genetic variations among populations of native rhododendron]. He sounded like a Ph.D. with twenty years of research experience."
Fifteen other students were making presentations the evening of the anniversary symposium. They all recounted what the Junior Fellows experience had meant to them and how the experience had changed them.
As an intern with New York Stage & Film, Katie Kolacki spent last summer at Vassar College, where the company showcased the work of new playwrights, held workshop festivals and mounted three mainstage productions with big-name actors. She did everything from keeping the callboard, to helping with set changeovers, to sitting in on casting meetings, to reading lines with actor Richard Schiff. "I got to see how everything comes together and I was able to make real contributions to the management team's efforts to keep the actors and directors happy," she said. "It was an awesome experience that really built my confidence."
Biology major Gia Grier recounted her trip to Alaska, where she weighed the pros and cons of coastal plain drilling, and came down on the side of the caribou. Jeremy Gantz, an environmental studies and anthropology major, participated in the Saami people's annual reindeer roundup in northern Finland, while considering how the traditional Saami culture is threatened by the encroaching modern world. Andria Hayes-Birchler, an international studies and political science major, talked about her volunteer work with the Raphael AIDS Crisis Center in Grahamstown, South Africa. Maliha and Nada Hashmi, sisters born in Pakistan, shared the message of Precious Mohammed, an African American Muslim they met during a peace conference at Harvard University.
"I really liked what Libby Cater Halaby had to say about taking on life's challenges," remarked Penny Tilghman, a political science major who with Cater Fellows support participated in the Hansard Scholars Program in London. "Be curious, keep an open mind, and take some chances. I'm really grateful to Washington College for giving me the opportunity to do that, and I encourage all of you to take every opportunity offered to you," Tilghman told her fellow students during her presentation. "I'm just a poor kid from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, who never imagined I'd study at the London School of Economics or intern at the House of Parliament. What I learned is that we all have a voice, and that one person really can make a difference."
Expectations run high for these student leaders and scholars who have passed through the portals of the Cater Society. How has this society of high achievers fared in their pursuit of knowledge beyond college? Evidence would suggest that those expectations are not misplaced.
Eileen Hunter '96, a biology major and premedical student, was awarded a Junior Fellows grant for a medical internship at George Washington University's Children's National Medical Center, where she worked in oncology and intensive care, and at DC Children's Hospital, where she did rotations in oncology and infant care. Today, after earning her medical degree from Georgetown University Medical Center, she is a resident in pediatrics at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.
"Science was always really interesting to me, but as a young college student I didn't know how I felt about patients or hospitals," recalls Hunter. "I felt it was really important to have the opportunity to explore the medical landscape while working with doctors, nurses, patients and support staff like respiratory therapists and child psychologists. It was nice to get a sense of the different components of medicine, and to find out if I had the constitution to deal with a hospital environment. The Junior Fellows grant opened up the doors and really helped me decide to go into medicine."
Of all the medical paths she might have taken, Hunter is convinced that pediatrics is the perfect field. "Children are very hopeful and very resilient. A lot of people think working with kids who have cancer is sad, but the cure rate is so high and their chances for recovery are wonderful. When something's wrong you fix it, and they go on. It's very uplifting."
Donald McColl, chair of the art department is excited at the prospect of becoming
curator. "I want to build on the fine work that the two previous
curators, Davy McCall and David Newell, have done to enrich the
academic life of this College, in the way of getting the Society
off the ground, in the case of the former, and building it into
what it is today, in the case of the latter," said McColl. "It is
largely as a result of their work that our very best students are
afforded the opportunity to carry out projects all over the world,
endorsed by a Washington College faculty member and then supervised
by an authority on the subject on-site.
"The Junior Fellows are fortunate to study in a place that offers such close personal interaction between student and professor," McColl says. "To then be given the resources to go off and learn for themselves is a wonderful thing, which has born fruit in so many ways, not least of which is the cross-disciplinary dialogue that occurs when the Fellows return and present their work to an audience of their peers. This is what a liberal arts education is all about."
Marcia Landskroener, the College's senior writer, always finds good student story material among the membership of the Cater Society of Junior Fellows.
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