Of Scholars and Struggles
By Jayne M. Iafrate
It's early in the fall semester and Associate Dean of Studies Alex Trayford, the affable 30-something go-to man on campus for elite scholarship applicants, enters Meneely Hall's largest classroom. He's invited about 70 of Wheaton's most promising students to a workshop on applying for the world's most prestigious scholarships - Fulbright, Rhodes, Truman, Marshall and the like - and fewer than half show up.
His shoulders sink, and he lets out a nearly imperceptible sigh. Reliably upbeat, Trayford encounters his first obstacle of the school year: So many talented students, so few willing to endure the rigorous process of self-discovery required not only to complete their applications, but to understand who they are.
To call it a process is perhaps an understatement; it's more of an epic journey. Each year, a dozen or more Wheaton hopefuls compete with students across the nation for higher education's top academic prizes. The majority didn't start considering their options in September; most have been identified early in their Wheaton careers by professors, by advisers, and by Trayford.
"Alex has been instrumental in developing a support network - key in identifying potential applicants and helping to put the packages together - and has played a considerable role in establishing a culture of empowerment that works to raise aspirations and to drive ambitions," says Wheaton's first Rhodes recipient, Miles Sweet '01. "We each owe a lot of our success to him." Alex Trayford, now in his sixth year in a position created by Provost Susanne Woods to aid scholarship applicants, is an archaeologist by training. It's evident in the way he works. With each incoming first-year class, Trayford mines the student files for prospective applicants. It can be tedious work, but that's the easiest part of the process for him. Information such as grade point average, courses taken, activities or leadership experience is readily available in student files or in various campus publications. The intangibles - a willingness to explore their hearts and minds, a desire just to try - are much harder characteristics to unearth.
"There has to be a spark," Trayford explains. "They have to come into this with the ability to consider the process. I lose kids in the process, so I'm on the lookout for the ones who are most willing to try." Trying, of course, isn't enough. The process can last anywhere from three months to the entire academic year, depending on the award sought, so stamina is also key. Over those months, Trayford is in nearly constant conversation with scholarship applicants as they complete applications and prepare for interviews. During most of the fall semester, his calendar is packed with student meetings, often one every 15 minutes for days on end. This, he says, is his favorite part of the job.
"In multiple conversations, I can challenge students' ideas. It's where the real excavation happens," Trayford explains. "Some colleges groom students from the moment they arrive, but I don't work like that. It's disingenuous to try to 'create' scholars; I talk with them and watch them develop their own ideas. You can never predict when all the ideas will come together for a student, and you have to be ready when they do."
Ready is right. In 2001, two Fulbright prospects worked until the submission deadline to craft their applications. With no time left for mailing to New York City, Trayford jumped into his car and drove the applications to New York personally. Both applicants received their awards.
October
September may be one of the busiest months in the process as students consider which scholarships to pursue and jockey for time with Trayford, but October is the cruelest. Early in the month, Fulbright award applications are due in New York, and Wheaton students apply for more Fulbrights than any other grant. Last year, there were nine.
Sponsored by the U.S. State Department, the Fulbright is designed to give recent B.S./B.A. graduates and others opportunities for personal development and international experience. The best way to appreciate others' viewpoints, their beliefs, the way they think, and the way they do things, "is to interact with them directly on an individual basis-work with them, live with them, teach with them, learn with them, and learn from them," program administrators say. Most grantees plan their own programs, and projects may include university coursework, independent library or field research, teaching or special projects. While the Fulbright, in general, is a highly competitive award, certain countries or programs are more competitive than others. The United Kingdom, for example, attracts high numbers of young researchers, so the field of applicants is large and the competition fierce. Other countries offer just a handful of awards, making their programs just as competitive. Chile, for example, awards just seven grants each year, and it's the perfect destination for Christina Zerbini '04 of Wethersfield, Conn.
Zerbini exudes confidence - not in a "watch-out-here-I-come" way, but in more of a gentle way that assures people of her sincerity and competence. She comes from a long line of entrepreneurs, going all the way back to Greece-the country of her forbears-and she seems to have inherited the family gift for business. In addition to her Wheaton activities and honors - Trustee Scholar, Presidential Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, track team, Dean's List Top Ten, Presidential Search Committee, Greek Society founder, student mentor and others - Zerbini started her own Internet company in 2001.
It was the nexus of three passions - e-commerce, Hispanic language and culture (Zerbini's Junior Year Abroad took her to Wheaton's PRESCHO program in Córdoba, Spain) and entrepreneurship - that led her to pursue a Fulbright grant in Chile. According to the World Bank, Chile is poised to become one of the fastest-growing e-business economies in South America, and Zerbini proposed to study the factors in Chile that infiuence the adoption or rejection of e-commerce strategies in new small businesses.
"It was so exciting to find a connection to my personal interests-social and human capital," Zerbini explains. Through September she completed several drafts of her project statement and met weekly with Trayford, describing the process as like "taking another course."
By Oct. 3 she sent off her application with the blessing of several Chilean experts in the field, including Rocio Noriega, head researcher for the Chilean American Chamber of Commerce, who described Zerbini's project as "pertinent to the Chilean business community" and an exploration of "a largely unexamined topic."
All Fulbright applicants must go through a multi-stage application process. After the written application is submitted, applicants must be interviewed by a campus team of professors and advisers. If the interviewers recommend that the applicant continue the process, an American team of experts evaluates the application. If it passes this stage, the application is then sent to the host country for one last approval. Final notification of awards sometimes goes well into May.
On Oct. 7, all the Wheaton Fulbright hopefuls wait in a cramped reception space in Academic Advising. Behind closed doors at the other end of the hallway are Dean of Advising Vicky McGillin, Dean of Admission Gail Berson and Professors Michael Gousie (math) and Patty Stone (art) - the interviewers. Their job is to assess each applicant's readiness to move on to the next step in the process. The students appear upbeat but nervous, and several wonder aloud about the questions they'll be asked. Jonah Cool '04, applying to study in Iceland, keeps the conversation light with a blow-by-blow account of his first time making falafel, then moves on to describe his "disturbing" fear of dentists. Zerbini is called to be the first interviewee.
In a room full of academics, there seems to be a sense of disappointment in Zerbini's desire to pursue a business career over, as Berson puts it, teaching or a Ph.D.
Again and again the conversation turns to Zerbini's interest in entrepreneurship in Chile and the value she places in mentoring and consulting in e-business, and she speaks with assurance about what she wants to study and the research contacts she's made in the country. But when McGillin asks her how prepared Chile's culture is for the study of e-commerce, Zerbini falters. This is the one area still left for her to research, and she has no answer. She tries to redirect the conversation back to technology and commerce, but she can't recover her earlier composure. The interviewers pounce on this perceived weakness and pepper her with questions she has difficulty answering. In Zerbini's mind, it's over.
Of course, it isn't over, but as Zerbini steps out into the Dimple, tears stream down her face. "These things really throw me," she says of her frustration. "I just didn't know how to respond." She receives detailed feedback from the entire interview team, and they make another appointment. After the second interview, the Wheaton team recommends Zerbini's application to move forward.
November
As the crow flies, it's about 7,300 miles between Peterborough, N.H., and Tibet, and Adar Cohen is working with Dan Golden, dean for work and service learning, to calculate the best route.
While Wheaton's Fulbright applicants wait for news and decide whether to apply to graduate school-just in case the awards don't come through-Cohen is nearing the end of his application process for the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, a grant that will fund one year of independent travel and research abroad. Wheaton has been invited back into the competition after an 11-year absence, and Cohen is one of two Wheaton students competing for approximately 50 grants nationally. The grandson of Iranian refugees and the son of a rug merchant, he wants to weave his family's past with his academic future by studying the relationship between rugmaking and national, ethnic and religious identity in Tibet, Turkey, Peru and India.
"The Watson turns us all into anthropologists," Golden says. "It thrusts students into what's different."
The Watson is different from many other study grants because it allows students to create their own course of study nearly anywhere in the world - only U.S. State Department travel bans limit movement - for a full year. And they mean a full year; unless there is a grave emergency, grantees are prohibited from returning to the U.S.
"If I win, I don't know how I'll deal with the loneliness," Cohen says. "I guess I'll stay busy."
This shouldn't be a problem for Cohen. His list of interests, activities and accomplishments -everything from performing improvisational theater to studying confiict resolution and bringing school supplies to Mexican children-has fed his curiosity for years. He's traveled to Israel, Canada, Mexico, Bhutan, Switzerland and Peru, and in 2003 he was the winner of a Truman scholarship. Cohen hopes to study confiict resolution at the graduate level - it's a major he created for himself at Wheaton - but it was in his father's shop where he learned how cultures and peoples come together.
"A Turkish rug merchant, Turgut, was visiting my father's store," he recalls. "We were having Persian tea and a discussion in English and Farsi." Just as Turgut was leaving, he broke the "cardinal rule of every wholesale rug merchant; he showed more excitement over one of our rugs than he had over any of those he had brought to sell. 'This is my rug,' he whispered. 'That's me; this is my rug.'" The visiting dealer had recognized the rug as coming from his home region by its pattern and its design.
Trayford has been tracking Cohen's academic career at Wheaton for more than three years. He had hoped to convince the young student that a Rhodes was the ideal scholarship for him. "It's not my time," Cohen said when he declined to apply. Cohen's eight-page, single-spaced application for the Watson, developed not over the course of a couple months but during years of introspection, is submitted in early November. His final hurdle will be an interview with Watson executive director Beverly Larson.
While Cohen turns his attention back to his Wheaton studies, Jared Duval is struggling through his application for the Harry S. Truman Scholarship. It's due next month, and he's been at work on it since his freshman year. He's no stranger to Trayford's office; the Fairlee, Vt., resident won a Morris K. Udall award in the 2002-03 academic year, and he's met with Trayford nearly weekly since the start of this school year. He's overwhelmed and he knows it. Just back from a summer with the Howard Dean campaign as an energy and environmental policy intern, Duval's trying to balance campaign work, his studies in political science and economics, his prolific activities - he lists 35 service activities since high school on his application, most of them involving political or environmental issues and nearly half of them ongoing today - with the completion of his Truman application.
"I'm Alex's most high-maintenance student," Duval jokes, but he might be right. Duval is also in the competition for another Udall this year, and by the middle of November, with little of his Truman application completed, things are a bit tense between the two.
"You've had nine months to complete this," Trayford begins with a tone that says he's been through this before.
"I know it's not ideal," Duval starts to explain. "On a good note, I kicked my microeconomics exam's ass!"
"We're at crunch time..."
"I'm clutch!" Duval interrupts. "I completed the Brower application in a day and I won! I'm clutch."
But there's something else that's keeping Duval from completing the application, something he's slow to admit: guilt. When prodded, he tears up and struggles to find the right words.
"I fear that I'm selling out," Duval starts. "Some people will never have the opportunity to receive an award like this because they're out there doing the work, not applying for scholarships..."
"These organizations are looking for leaders," Trayford says to the young man who's spent so much of his life on the front lines of political action. "There's nothing wrong with being a leader."
"It's philosophical," Duval continues. "I've seen idealistic people go into the system to make change and end up selling out. I fear that - entering the 'system' and selling out." Despite his fear, he knows that the "system" - meaning grad school and politics - is the only path toward his higher objectives. "I can't go to grad school without the Truman. I come from a poor family, and I couldn't do any of this without their support. I have an obligation to everyone who supported me to do something that will support them."
It should come as no surprise that Duval intends to study either public policy or law in graduate school, after which he hopes to serve the people of Vermont in elected office. He has to complete his scholarship application first.
December
During the first days of the month, Dan Golden arranges a series of mock interviews for Cohen in advance of his meeting with Beverly Larson of the Watson Foundation. If the mock sessions are any indication of future success-the actual Watson interview is private-then Cohen has little to worry about. Over the course of an hour, he takes his questioners through a sensory history of Oriental rugmaking, using rugs collected on his travels to illustrate delicate motifs and to proudly display intricate repairs he made himself. He's in the zone.
By the time he and the rest of Wheaton's students leave for the January break, he knows that his interview went very well. What he doesn't know is whether or not he'll spend the following year studying with the rug industry contacts he's worked so hard to cultivate over the past few months in anticipation of winning the Watson. He'll have to wait three more months for that news.
January
The new year brings relief for Duval; he submits his Truman application complete with a 500-word policy statement and a nod to his father:
"I want to have his character and dedication be the hallmarks of a career in public service that he would have never thought possible for himself. The benefit of being true to the positive qualities I see in my father will be minimized and limited if I cannot achieve positions that allow me to apply my passion toward ushering in environmental and social progress on a scope and level that my father never had the opportunity to impact."
It's another story for Christina Zerbini. She learns that her Fulbright application will not progress to the next stage of the competition.
"I can't be discouraged by the rejection," says Zerbini, who in January is still working on the Presidential Search Committee that will soon invite Miami University Provost Ronald A. Crutcher to join the Wheaton family. "Sometimes the fit isn't right, and that's okay." She starts applying to grad schools and continues to write her honors thesis in economics.
February
Duval also must interview for the Truman award, and in February he enlists the help of Trayford, McGillin, and Professors Jay Goodman (political science) and Jonathan Walsh (French) for two back-to-back mock interviews. Wheaton is unique among its peers in that faculty are such active players in the preparation of scholarship applicants; according to Provost Susanne Woods, there are several beneficiaries of this specialized support.
"We devote substantial resources to supporting our students who are interested in fellowships or other high-level post-graduate experiences because their continuing success is important to us and inspires other students to step up their own expectations for what is possible," Woods says. "Their success is both the product and the emblem of the distinguished education Wheaton offers."
Duval already has the poise of a politician - his speaking skills honed though years of political canvassing, protest and action - and he brings it on from the very start of his mock interview. He loves to talk, and one of Trayford's concerns for Duval in the real Truman interview is his penchant for speaking at length. Midway through an answer describing his general commitment to Vermont politics, Goodman cuts him off and demands details. When Duval starts up again, Goodman interrupts again. The young student is rattled, but still on his feet. Then Trayford jumps into the fray, challenging a proposal for free television advertising for political candidates. A solid debater, Duval is reeling; then Goodman goes in for the kill.
"Your proposal sounds like a bunch of high school kids saying 'Isn't this neat?'"
Duval keeps trying to refine his answer, but none of it passes muster with Goodman, one of the college's most demanding professors. When the mock interview concludes and it's time for feedback, he is characteristically blunt in delivering good advice.
"They want to hear that you're running for office," Goodman says of the Truman administrators. "They don't care about this other shit. Give them details. Your proposals and arguments have to be sharp and sophisticated."
Duval, good-natured as ever, listens to each faculty member as they critique his performance. When he completes his real interview later in the month, he's ready.
March
At Wheaton this year, Christmas comes in March. Jared Duval learns that his dream of attending graduate school will become a reality with a $30,000 award from the Truman Foundation. Adar Cohen learns that he will spend the next year visiting the remote villages and urban centers that support rugmaking in Turkey, Tibet and India, thanks to a $22,000 grant from the Watson Foundation. Duval turns his attention back to presidential politics, and Cohen polishes his honor's thesis in conflict resolution.
April-May
With the academic year winding down for students and most faculty, Dan Golden and Alex Trayford are looking toward the future. On April 13, Golden hosts an informational session for potential Watson applicants, and he is especially hopeful. While only two Wheaton students were invited to apply for Watson grants in the 2003-04 academic year, four students will be invited for the following year, doubling Wheaton's chances to launch another scholar into international research.
Trayford is already at work on 2005 Fulbright applications with five students, and the coming graduation of Zerbini and Cohen doesn't dull his interest in their potential as scholars. Each year Trayford works with one or two alumni on scholarship applications, and this year he hopes to convince Zerbini to apply for the Fulbright again and Cohen to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship. He also believes Duval-who in April learned that he had won a Morris K. Udall award for undergraduate study of environmental policy- has a strong shot at a Rhodes.
In May, Wheaton sends the members of Class of 2004 to their next great adventure, and Cohen and Zerbini are among the best of the best. Both graduate summa cum laude and share the Sally Gale Gilman Award. Zerbini also is the winner of the Jean Mulcahy Keefe '44 Prize in Economics and the Burlingame-Moles Prize in Spanish.
Epilogue
In June Christina Zerbini planned to enter the Financial Leadership Program at Pratt & Whitney in Hartford, Conn. For the next two years, she hopes to learn the business from the inside out, rotating through four six-month assignments throughout the company's management. When she's done, she hopes to have gained a solid background in business leadership and a bit more experience to guide her through graduate school.
Jared Duval used his Summer Davis Fellowship from Wheaton to travel to Tanzania, where he taught economics, wrote grants for essential supplies and programs at the St. Mary's school, and continued his political organizing.
"If I was home now I would be canvassing for Kerry/Edwards or doing something to help progressive Democrats on the local level," he wrote in July. "My experience here has only strengthened my belief in the need for engaged, localized and participatory democratic systems. The citizens of Tanzania or any other developing country would do anything to have the rights and freedoms we have, especially the ability that we all have to substantively impact the political process in a fair and honest way."
Adar Cohen spent the summer as a fellow at Search for Common Ground in Washington, D.C., a nongovernmental organization that studies confiict resolution, where he brought children of Israeli and Arab backgrounds together for soccer and community service. By August 1, he was on his way to Peru.
