Watson winner announced
Ellen London
Issue date: 4/8/09 Section: News
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The fellowship entails a stipend of $25,000 to be used over the course of the year following each awardees' college graduation. This year, 40 students from all over the country-including Bowdoin, Bates and Middlebury Colleges-received the award.
The 40 winners were among hundreds who applied for the fellowship in September, a process that began with a proposal submission to each candidate's home institution and continued into a cycle of interviews run by committees from each college and representatives from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. The final application also included a lengthy personal statement and project proposal.
Maradiaga's winning project is titled "Redefining Success Narratives: A Glimpse into the World of the Marginalized." The project finds its origin in the narrative of Maradiaga's own experiences when he was faced with the decision to leave home and pursue higher education.
An Americanized teenager from an immigrant family, Maradiaga experienced a clash of cultural priorities and the hardships of gaining access to institutions of higher learning first-hand. "In my household, there were competing notions of success," he said in an interview. While education was certainly valued, Maradiaga recalled how his mother and brother initially felt that a college education was superfluous. As such, he was left to explore his opportunities on his own-which eventually led him to Mayflower Hill.
Accordingly, "Redefining Success Narratives" will include interviews with college-bound students in Ecuador, South Africa and India. Maradiaga hopes to target youths who have been marginalized by race, class, gender or societal conventions in order to understand how these students overcame adversity in the pursuit of a college degree.
He plans to use their stories to reshape a definition of success, one that is the result of the successful negotiation of "ideals espoused at home and at school," according to Maradiaga's personal statement. "I want to see how my story plays out in other countries," he said.
Of his successful project, Maradiaga said that the outpouring of support and congratulations has been remarkable: "It's a wonderful feeling. I have alums and former awardees from as far back as the '80s e-mailing and calling to offer their support and advice." Their most salient piece of wisdom is "not to start planning too early, and to be flexible since my itinerary is bound to change," Maradiaga said.
He plans to heed this input by not over-planning a set schedule after his tentative June 15 departure date: "I think I'll start with India, and just take it from there." Maradiaga will audio-record his interviews with students in all three countries, and then spend time reflecting upon their content and implications.
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