Four students named Watson finalists

Karen Peppiatt, Mara Sizener, Sara Stonner and Trinh Thai are Union finalists for the Thomas J. Watson Traveling Fellowship. They will advance to competition with finalists from 49 other liberal arts colleges. Sixty winners will receive a stipend of $16,000 for travel outside of North America.

Peppiat, an English major, has planned a year in the British Isles, the Channel Islands and Brittany, where she would like to meet young poets and work on her own poetry. Sizener, a psychology major and granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, plans to travel to Europe and Israel to see how culture affects the transmission of trauma through generations. Stonner, an economics major, proposes helping establish women-owned and operated small businesses in Kenya, Brazil and the Dominican Republic. Civil engineering major Trinh Thai would like to study the social, political and economic effects of historic bridges in Europe and Asia.

Nineteen seniors applied for the fellowship. Others were Ryan Bloom, Rebecca Barry, Tracy Bush, Michele Cohen, Michelle Ellis, John Green, Chris Hancock, Lorene Kaminski, Reinis Kanders, Jeffrey Malec, Brian Pidgeon, Craig Pike, Anand Rao, Eric Sharfstein and Monica Webster.

On Union's selection committee are Professors Douglass Klein, (committee chair, economics), Caroll Hilles (English), Libby Jones (civil engineering), Seyfollah Maleki (engineering) and Teresa Meade (history).