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Brent Otto '01 has been awarded one of 60 fellowships from
the Thomas J. Watson Foundation to pursue a yearlong independent
study of "The Faces of Catholic Education in India and Sri
Lanka."
Otto,
of Framingham, Mass., is a history major and participant in the College's teacher
certification program. Fascinated by the role of Catholic secondary schools in
cultures where the dominant religion is not Christianity, he plans to visit schools
for extended periods of observation and conversation with students, their families
and faculty to study the schools' roles, both as educational institutions and
as representatives of Catholicism. Members of the Holy Cross Jesuit community
have been particularly helpful
in identifying sites in the region where Otto's project could be effectively
pursued.
This project is personally significant to Otto, since his mother was raised in
colonial India and educated in a Catholic school there. It will also allow him
to consider the broad spectrum of approaches to teaching, which he plans to make
his life work.
Holy Cross is among 50 liberal arts colleges and universities invited to nominate
up to four students each year for this prestigious award. More than 1,000 students
applied in 2001. The recent winners range from physicists to studio artists with
such individual interests as roller-coaster design, classification of tropical
frogs and the international art market. They will be awarded $22,000 to support
a year of travel and to pursue in-depth independent study. The goal of the Watson
program is to open up the Fellows to the wider world and foster an appreciation
for cultural differences and a more
informed sense of international concern.
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