Joey Hunziker, Andrew Krauss, Andy Laccetti, Robbie Flick
This year’s four Watson Fellowship nominees have proposed travel-study topics that cross disciplines, push boundaries and span the globe.
“The Watson Fellowship is unique because it is not an academic fellowship – it is geared toward sending students with exceptional leadership qualities on a journey of self discovery and personal challenge,” said History Professor Joyce Madancy, chair of the College’s Watson Fellowship Committee. “The Foundation likes to say that it is looking for people first, and then projects, and so the projects really need to reflect a unique student’s passion.”
The Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Program offers a one-year grant to graduating college seniors “of unusual promise” to study independently outside the United States. The stipend for individual award winners is $25,000.
In addition to Madancy, Union’s Watson committee includes Maggie Tongue, director of Postgraduate Fellowships, Professors Ann Anderson (Mechanical Engineering), Charles Batson (French), David Ogawa (Visual Arts) and John Zumbrunnen (Political Science), and Bill Wolff '94.
Former Union nominees who went on to win the Watson include Noah Eber-Schmid ’06, who investigated punk music and culture in Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway and Finland; Adam Grode ’05, who studied long-necked lutes in Central Asia; and Nori Lupfer ’03, who photographed circuses in motion on several continents.
This year’s nominees:
ROBBIE FLICK “Perspectives on Global Poverty and Starvation”
Flick, of Baltimore, Md., is a double major in Marine Science and Visual Arts and an Organizing Theme major in Visual Arts and Biology. He wants to use his photography to answer questions about what it’s like to live on the edge, or more specifically, “the edges beyond which survival wouldn’t be possible.”
He plans to travel to the extreme high altitude of Gasa province in Bhutan, to the flood-ravaged Ganges River delta in coastal Bangladesh and to the Carteret Islands of Papua New Guinea to visit a society threatened by rising sea levels.
Flick recalls a visit during high school to Statia, an island in the Caribbean’s Lesser Antilles, where raw sewage lines the streets and a hungry boy pestered him for food. “Being in this impoverished village was a defining life event,” he says. He was shocked by the contrast with his own life, but couldn’t find a way to express it. After taking a Digital Arts course at Union, he set about using photography to document poverty in Schenectady.
“In a sense, it was an examination of that same divide that, although separated greatly in time and space, existed between the Statian boy and myself that formative morning,” he wrote.
Armed with his newfound means of expression, Flick embarked on a year abroad in Australia, traveling in an old van to meet with surfers in western Tasmania and the inhabitants of Nimbin in remote New South Wales. “My destinations involved finding the end of the road, a particular edge where the most eccentric thrived, navigating that edge and trying to transcend it,” he recalls.
Of his proposed Watson, he writes, “The overriding theme in my Watson year is the edge between photographer and subject, and my desire to overcome it. I hope to transcend this edge, to understand and interact with the cultures I encounter in a dynamic way, and in doing so, create an educational and intriguing dialogue of images and writing.”
JOEY HUNZIKER “Speak Up: Finding a Voice and Connection through Theater”
Hunziker, of Schenectady, is a Theater major with minors in Dance and Music. He would like to pursue his passion for movement-based theater in Mexico, Italy, Brazil and Japan.
“In Italy and Japan, they have ancient forms of theater, like the commedia del arte and noh. In Mexico and Brazil, they never had institutional theater. People are becoming more active in theater in these four countries and addressing social and political issues, and that’s what I’d like to do here – find other people’s passion and connect through it,” Hunziker said.
“The connection is not through text only, but through bodies, as well, which is the universal language. Physical theater has impassioned me and helped me connect to what I want to do.”
Hunziker is a familiar face to many at Union. Over the past four years he has tackled diverse roles in such Theater & Dance Department productions as “Dracula,” “The Birds,” “Threepenny Opera” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
He also has performed in many dance concerts. Last winter, he had a role in “Jean Cocteau: Le Prince Frivole,” an original dance-theater piece by Miryam Moutillet, director of the dance program, and Charles Batson, associate professor of French, in which theater majors danced and dance students delivered lines of text.
ANDREW KRAUSS: “In Pursuit of Speed: Evolution in Outrigger Canoeing”
Krauss, of Boston, proposes a project that draws on his lifelong passion for making boats go fast. He plans to travel to Hawaii, the Cook Islands, Tahiti and Tonga to research the development of outrigger canoes and paddles.
The double major in Philosophy and Mechanical Engineering has early memories of learning to kayak at a camp in Maine. From there, he graduated to the crew team at St. Mark’s School and finally to crew at Union.
Krauss observed that most sports have benefitted from advances in technology. Drag-reducing “fastsuits” have made swimmers faster. Advanced alloys have improved performance of golf clubs. And carbon fiber has made crew shells faster.
Then there’s the outrigger.
While on a Union term in Fiji, Krauss learned that despite vast technological improvements in modern sports, this ancient one had been untouched by rigorous scientific investigation.
Without the benefit of science, hull designers have relied largely on “boat feel,” a more holistic approach, he notes. A boat that feels good will be smooth and responsive, accelerating at will, he explains.
There’s also the difference of open water. “Outrigger canoeing has many of the features that I love about crew – the timing, rhythm, endurance and determination – but with a totally new aspect of an open ocean, in which courses are harder to maintain and you can ride swells as easily as be flipped by them,” he wrote.
Krauss, who rowed during a junior-year internship in Japan, says he began to crystallize his idea for a Watson while working on boats with Pacific Fibreglass as part of the entrepreneurship component of the Anthropology term in Fiji. The experience allowed him to “get my hands dirty and see what goes into these boats.
“During my Watson Fellowship I would like to cultivate this experience and broaden it significantly,” he said.
ANDY LACCETTI: “Hear the Healing: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Music Therapy and Its Implementation in Four Countries”
Laccetti, of North Andover, Mass., has blended his two biggest passions, medicine and music, in his proposed exploration of music therapy in Argentina, Brazil, China and India.
“I have experienced the power of music in the past and want to explore its full potential. I find it incredible how different combinations of tones can have such a profound physiological effect on the body,” he said.
A member of Union’s Leadership in Medicine program with a double major in Chemistry and Music, Laccetti is intrigued by complementary medicine, or alternative medical interventions generally not taught in Western medical schools or hospitals. Music therapy uses music to enhance general well-being and to help those experiencing emotional, physical or physiological stresses.
“It has a variety of therapeutic applications, including in pain management, communicative disorders, psychosomatic and mental health issues, even modulation of hormones,” Laccetti said.
“India and China have some of the richest forms of music therapy associated with their respective forms of traditional medicine. I love South American music like tango and Bossa Nova, and I want to see how it plays into their music therapy system.”
If given the chance to pursue his project, Laccetti would make contact with practitioners, researchers and spiritual leaders in each of these countries, observing their therapeutic practice and participating when appropriate.
“It is my goal to pursue something that medical school will not provide – a complete exploration of music therapy. I want to do something that will help me grow as a person and better prepare myself to be an open-minded, well-rounded doctor.”
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