Paid to follow their dreams
Travel Award: Recent UPS graduates Margaret Shelton and Jacki Ward have each won a fellowship to pursue their passion around the world for a year.
It’s the ultimate college dream – spend a year traveling the world, doing what you love to do, and having someone pay you for it. Beginning this summer, it’ll be reality for Margaret Shelton and Jacki Ward, recent University of Puget Sound graduates who have each just won a prestigious $25,000 Watson Fellowship.
Granted to just 40 private university students nationally each year, the Watson Fellowship Program rewards successful applicants with the budget to travel and study abroad for a year – and those studies are often highly unusual.
A lengthy selection process, including several essays and interviews, means that Watson Fellowships draw only high achievers: Past fellows have gone on to be MacArthur “Genius” grant recipients, executives and diplomats.
“We look for persons likely to lead or innovate in the future,” says Watson director Cleveland Johnson. Since 1993, UPS has produced 23 fellows, and this year it’s one of just three West Coast colleges to have students win the award.
But fellows also share another quality, something more unusual: From winemaking to midwifery, sword-dancing to yogurt cultures, Watson winners have passions that take them beyond academia and into the corners of human culture. Tacoma’s students both fit the bill: Shelton is a harpist who will set off in August to study the instrument in Asia, Europe and Central America; Ward is an anthropology major and contortionist whose travels to Asia, Europe and Canada, beginning in July, will fuse her two disciplines.
MARGARET SHELTON, HARPIST
With the lights creating a halo around her long brown curls and smooth Renaissance face, Margaret Shelton looks angelic as she sits at her concert harp on the Schneebeck Hall stage at UPS. Then the 22-year-old launches into a bluesy jazz number that jumps from the instrument’s golden, tendril-etched soundboard. It sums up, in a way, what Shelton wants to do with her Watson Fellowship: Get beyond the classical harp image through harp-playing cultures in China, Germany, France, Spain, Ireland and Paraguay.
“When I found out I’d won it, I didn’t feel anything for a moment. Then I looked at my mom, burst out crying and felt this rush of peace and excitement,” says Shelton. “This is something I really want to do, and I’m so excited about it.”
Sipping peppermint tea outside UPS’s student cafe, Shelton epitomizes the enthusiastic, self-possessed kind of person the Watson rewards. Tall and composed, she has planned her fellowship year to the day – appropriate for someone who’d planned her harp studies from the age of 5.
“My family’s Scottish/Irish, and we went to see the Highland Games in Enumclaw,” recalls Shelton, who grew up in Tacoma. She saw a harpist playing there, and fell in love with the instrument. Her parents told her she had to study piano for a year first, and she dutifully did her drills, scales and final recital.
“On the car ride home, I asked again could I learn the harp?” smiles Shelton. Sixteen years later she has her own concert harp, plays gigs and teaches, has performed at the Pantages, and has just graduated with a music degree.
“Margaret’s a marvelous young woman, very mature, intelligent, hard-working, and talented in music as well,” says Patricia Wooster, Shelton’s harp teacher. “All the faculty at UPS love her. And she has a fabulous plan.”
Wooster also points out that Shelton has had previous experience overseas: a semester studying harp in Vienna, where she learned the kind of independence the Watson program looks for: “In one year she’d gained the wisdom and connections it took me many years to achieve,” says Wooster.
And there’s more to come. Beginning Aug. 1, Shelton will explore harp-making and playing in various cultures around the world, seeking out teachers, makers and performers. She’d originally thought to begin studying the koto in Japan, but the recent earthquake has meant she’ll start in China instead, where the ancient Konghou folk harp tradition has recently been restored. After two months there, she heads to Germany for an international convention, then to Paris, where she’ll not only delve into classical harp repertoire but visit top manufacturer the Carmac Center and attend an international competition. She’s already been contacted by a former Watson Fellow and Parisian harpist, the kind of networking the Watson encourages.
“It’s kind of like a club,” Shelton explains.
After France comes a month in Spain, where Shelton will study the unusual cross-stringed harp and its relationship to Spanish guitar playing, followed by three months in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, each with its own folk music and techniques.
“I’m hoping my budget will let me buy a little Irish folk harp,” says Shelton excitedly. For the rest of the journey, she’ll be borrowing harps to practice on wherever she goes.
Finally, in June and July 2012, the harpist intends to study Paraguayan harp in either Mexico City or Paraguay itself, exploring the two cultures and learning music by ear with teacher Celso Duarte.
Not that the Watson is a carte blanche for tourism. Shelton has to stay within the $25,000 budget, report quarterly, travel alone, and stay outside the United States for exactly one year. At the end she’ll attend a national meeting of all 2011 Watson Fellows, but is not supposed to confer with any beforehand (though she found sympathy emailing fellow UPS recipient Jacki Ward during the exhausting, six-month application process).
But it’s not all work, either. “They expect you to do other things,” says Shelton, who’s looking forward to sightseeing, visiting churches and going dancing, another big passion.
The trip is also providing Shelton with raw material: She’s intending to blog, film her experiences, bring back new tunes for the harp community, speak, and possibly write about her travels when she returns. It’ll also provide ideas for a post-graduate dissertation, which she hopes to do at UPS.
But will the Watson year, which seems to offer graduates a perfect career jump-start, lure Shelton into an international life?
“That’s what my mom thinks, that I’ll meet some handsome European man and stay there,” Shelton says, laughing. “But I want to come back to Tacoma and play professionally, build up a studio. I love it here. I’ve put down roots.”
JACKI WARD, CONTORTIONIST
Slowly, with intense concentration in her far-away eyes, Jacki Ward pushes up to a handstand and balances. As her legs come down into a bent-knee splits, her back arches unbelievably, until one toe is grazing her cheek. Finally, she rests both forearms and feet beside her face in a full backbend, and grins.
“This grant was the ideal opportunity for me to pursue both my field of anthropology and my passion of contortion,” she says. “Contortion isolates the focus onto the human body, this crazy, awesome tool that we all have. I hope to perform an evolved meditation on the wondrousness of being human.”
Ward isn’t your typical anthropology student – or contortionist, for that matter. Growing up in Portland, she did some gymnastics as a child but wasn’t “absurdly flexible,” and it wasn’t until she took a few acrobatics classes at physical theater company Do Jump that she got excited about hand balances and flexibility. After that, the short, muscly 23-year-old has been largely self-taught, relying on good genetics for her progress and continuing her studies with an anthropology major at UPS, where she graduated in December. She teaches at Seattle’s School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts (SANCA), and performs at corporate functions. She trains for several hours each day.
“There are probably a lot of people out there who have the same potential as I do who just haven’t realized it,” she says generously.
As she works with contortion students at SANCA before continuing her own extreme workout, Ward shows how much she’s taught herself. She encourages her students but keeps them working intelligently, balancing stretching with counter-contracting, and changing angles to rotate the different parts of each muscle through splits, forward bends and those spine-defying backbends.
In her studies, she’s been equally self-starting.
“Jacki’s always had a clear and original vision for her study,” says Monica DeHart, her UPS adviser. Not only has Ward completed a semester abroad in Argentina, getting involved with circus communities there and a summer research project exploring gender politics in local contortion performance, but she designed her own major, combining anthropology and performing arts and presenting an aerial fabric act as part of a research paper.
“For me, the Watson was just the culmination and validation of her trajectory so far,” says DeHart. “I really think she’ll do something interesting with it.”
What Ward intends to do is explore how contortionism defines identity in four different cultures – Mongolian, Chinese, Indian and Canadian – and use her understanding to develop an act that illuminates beyond mere thrill.
“I want to push this path as far as I can,” Ward says.
Her first stop will be Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, in July.
“In Mongolia, contortionism is a 1,000-year-old folk art, the equivalent to ballet in the U.S.,” Ward explains. “It’s both religious and cultural.” While training with coaches, she’ll also study folk dance. She already knows how to say “I’m a contortionist” in Mongolian.
“It has the word ‘artist’ in it,” says Ward. “They’re linked.”
After three months, she’ll head for Bejing. In China, Ward explains, acrobatics evolved out of sports games, and still retains that highly technical, competitive aspect. Contortionists don’t just contort – they juggle, do plate spinning and other skills.
January will be spent attending an international circus festival in France and Germany, and in February she’ll travel to India to study yoga – not just the spiritual, limb-twisting kind, but also the street performance acrobatics on ropes that have been part of village life in India for centuries.
“I’ve done yoga here and there, but it’s not very challenging,” says Ward, who hopes to find more advanced classes in Mysore and Mumbai. “But part of yoga is to bring awareness into the body, and I think it’s complementary. It’s a collaboration with the body.”
Finally, the contortionist will spend three months “studio-hopping” in Montreal, Canada – the Mecca for contemporary Western, Cirque du Soleil-style circus. During her travels, Ward intends to train for half the day, and spend the rest in anthropologist mode, talking to people and volunteering.
After the Watson year, she’ll either pursue a doctorate or start her own circus company.
As to why she won the Watson, Ward is straightforward. “I’m sure contortionism is something they don’t see often,” she says with a wide smile. “I’ve traveled independently, and the Watson looks for people who’ll be successful. They also look for passion – and I really care about this.”
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568 rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com
It’s the ultimate college dream – spend a year traveling the world, doing what you love to do, and having someone pay you for it. Beginning this summer, it’ll be reality for Margaret Shelton and Jacki Ward, recent University of Puget Sound graduates who have each just won a prestigious $25,000 Watson Fellowship.
Granted to just 40 private university students nationally each year, the Watson Fellowship Program rewards successful applicants with the budget to travel and study abroad for a year – and those studies are often highly unusual.
A lengthy selection process, including several essays and interviews, means that Watson Fellowships draw only high achievers: Past fellows have gone on to be MacArthur “Genius” grant recipients, executives and diplomats.
“We look for persons likely to lead or innovate in the future,” says Watson director Cleveland Johnson. Since 1993, UPS has produced 23 fellows, and this year it’s one of just three West Coast colleges to have students win the award.
But fellows also share another quality, something more unusual: From winemaking to midwifery, sword-dancing to yogurt cultures, Watson winners have passions that take them beyond academia and into the corners of human culture. Tacoma’s students both fit the bill: Shelton is a harpist who will set off in August to study the instrument in Asia, Europe and Central America; Ward is an anthropology major and contortionist whose travels to Asia, Europe and Canada, beginning in July, will fuse her two disciplines.
MARGARET SHELTON, HARPIST
With the lights creating a halo around her long brown curls and smooth Renaissance face, Margaret Shelton looks angelic as she sits at her concert harp on the Schneebeck Hall stage at UPS. Then the 22-year-old launches into a bluesy jazz number that jumps from the instrument’s golden, tendril-etched soundboard. It sums up, in a way, what Shelton wants to do with her Watson Fellowship: Get beyond the classical harp image through harp-playing cultures in China, Germany, France, Spain, Ireland and Paraguay.
“When I found out I’d won it, I didn’t feel anything for a moment. Then I looked at my mom, burst out crying and felt this rush of peace and excitement,” says Shelton. “This is something I really want to do, and I’m so excited about it.”
Sipping peppermint tea outside UPS’s student cafe, Shelton epitomizes the enthusiastic, self-possessed kind of person the Watson rewards. Tall and composed, she has planned her fellowship year to the day – appropriate for someone who’d planned her harp studies from the age of 5.
“My family’s Scottish/Irish, and we went to see the Highland Games in Enumclaw,” recalls Shelton, who grew up in Tacoma. She saw a harpist playing there, and fell in love with the instrument. Her parents told her she had to study piano for a year first, and she dutifully did her drills, scales and final recital.
“On the car ride home, I asked again could I learn the harp?” smiles Shelton. Sixteen years later she has her own concert harp, plays gigs and teaches, has performed at the Pantages, and has just graduated with a music degree.
“Margaret’s a marvelous young woman, very mature, intelligent, hard-working, and talented in music as well,” says Patricia Wooster, Shelton’s harp teacher. “All the faculty at UPS love her. And she has a fabulous plan.”
Wooster also points out that Shelton has had previous experience overseas: a semester studying harp in Vienna, where she learned the kind of independence the Watson program looks for: “In one year she’d gained the wisdom and connections it took me many years to achieve,” says Wooster.
And there’s more to come. Beginning Aug. 1, Shelton will explore harp-making and playing in various cultures around the world, seeking out teachers, makers and performers. She’d originally thought to begin studying the koto in Japan, but the recent earthquake has meant she’ll start in China instead, where the ancient Konghou folk harp tradition has recently been restored. After two months there, she heads to Germany for an international convention, then to Paris, where she’ll not only delve into classical harp repertoire but visit top manufacturer the Carmac Center and attend an international competition. She’s already been contacted by a former Watson Fellow and Parisian harpist, the kind of networking the Watson encourages.
“It’s kind of like a club,” Shelton explains.
After France comes a month in Spain, where Shelton will study the unusual cross-stringed harp and its relationship to Spanish guitar playing, followed by three months in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, each with its own folk music and techniques.
“I’m hoping my budget will let me buy a little Irish folk harp,” says Shelton excitedly. For the rest of the journey, she’ll be borrowing harps to practice on wherever she goes.
Finally, in June and July 2012, the harpist intends to study Paraguayan harp in either Mexico City or Paraguay itself, exploring the two cultures and learning music by ear with teacher Celso Duarte.
Not that the Watson is a carte blanche for tourism. Shelton has to stay within the $25,000 budget, report quarterly, travel alone, and stay outside the United States for exactly one year. At the end she’ll attend a national meeting of all 2011 Watson Fellows, but is not supposed to confer with any beforehand (though she found sympathy emailing fellow UPS recipient Jacki Ward during the exhausting, six-month application process).
But it’s not all work, either. “They expect you to do other things,” says Shelton, who’s looking forward to sightseeing, visiting churches and going dancing, another big passion.
The trip is also providing Shelton with raw material: She’s intending to blog, film her experiences, bring back new tunes for the harp community, speak, and possibly write about her travels when she returns. It’ll also provide ideas for a post-graduate dissertation, which she hopes to do at UPS.
But will the Watson year, which seems to offer graduates a perfect career jump-start, lure Shelton into an international life?
“That’s what my mom thinks, that I’ll meet some handsome European man and stay there,” Shelton says, laughing. “But I want to come back to Tacoma and play professionally, build up a studio. I love it here. I’ve put down roots.”
JACKI WARD, CONTORTIONIST
Slowly, with intense concentration in her far-away eyes, Jacki Ward pushes up to a handstand and balances. As her legs come down into a bent-knee splits, her back arches unbelievably, until one toe is grazing her cheek. Finally, she rests both forearms and feet beside her face in a full backbend, and grins.
“This grant was the ideal opportunity for me to pursue both my field of anthropology and my passion of contortion,” she says. “Contortion isolates the focus onto the human body, this crazy, awesome tool that we all have. I hope to perform an evolved meditation on the wondrousness of being human.”
Ward isn’t your typical anthropology student – or contortionist, for that matter. Growing up in Portland, she did some gymnastics as a child but wasn’t “absurdly flexible,” and it wasn’t until she took a few acrobatics classes at physical theater company Do Jump that she got excited about hand balances and flexibility. After that, the short, muscly 23-year-old has been largely self-taught, relying on good genetics for her progress and continuing her studies with an anthropology major at UPS, where she graduated in December. She teaches at Seattle’s School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts (SANCA), and performs at corporate functions. She trains for several hours each day.
“There are probably a lot of people out there who have the same potential as I do who just haven’t realized it,” she says generously.
As she works with contortion students at SANCA before continuing her own extreme workout, Ward shows how much she’s taught herself. She encourages her students but keeps them working intelligently, balancing stretching with counter-contracting, and changing angles to rotate the different parts of each muscle through splits, forward bends and those spine-defying backbends.
In her studies, she’s been equally self-starting.
“Jacki’s always had a clear and original vision for her study,” says Monica DeHart, her UPS adviser. Not only has Ward completed a semester abroad in Argentina, getting involved with circus communities there and a summer research project exploring gender politics in local contortion performance, but she designed her own major, combining anthropology and performing arts and presenting an aerial fabric act as part of a research paper.
“For me, the Watson was just the culmination and validation of her trajectory so far,” says DeHart. “I really think she’ll do something interesting with it.”
What Ward intends to do is explore how contortionism defines identity in four different cultures – Mongolian, Chinese, Indian and Canadian – and use her understanding to develop an act that illuminates beyond mere thrill.
“I want to push this path as far as I can,” Ward says.
Her first stop will be Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, in July.
“In Mongolia, contortionism is a 1,000-year-old folk art, the equivalent to ballet in the U.S.,” Ward explains. “It’s both religious and cultural.” While training with coaches, she’ll also study folk dance. She already knows how to say “I’m a contortionist” in Mongolian.
“It has the word ‘artist’ in it,” says Ward. “They’re linked.”
After three months, she’ll head for Bejing. In China, Ward explains, acrobatics evolved out of sports games, and still retains that highly technical, competitive aspect. Contortionists don’t just contort – they juggle, do plate spinning and other skills.
January will be spent attending an international circus festival in France and Germany, and in February she’ll travel to India to study yoga – not just the spiritual, limb-twisting kind, but also the street performance acrobatics on ropes that have been part of village life in India for centuries.
“I’ve done yoga here and there, but it’s not very challenging,” says Ward, who hopes to find more advanced classes in Mysore and Mumbai. “But part of yoga is to bring awareness into the body, and I think it’s complementary. It’s a collaboration with the body.”
Finally, the contortionist will spend three months “studio-hopping” in Montreal, Canada – the Mecca for contemporary Western, Cirque du Soleil-style circus. During her travels, Ward intends to train for half the day, and spend the rest in anthropologist mode, talking to people and volunteering.
After the Watson year, she’ll either pursue a doctorate or start her own circus company.
As to why she won the Watson, Ward is straightforward. “I’m sure contortionism is something they don’t see often,” she says with a wide smile. “I’ve traveled independently, and the Watson looks for people who’ll be successful. They also look for passion – and I really care about this.”
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568 rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com
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