Competitive Fellowships

from Mount Magazine fall 2020

Mount Family Through the Seasons

THE OFFICE OF COMPETITIVE FELLOWSHIPS assists students and alumni of the Mount community with the application process for highly competitive and distinguished awards, such as the Fulbright, Marshall, Rhodes, Goldwater and Gates Cambridge Scholarship.

These awards typically fund a number of opportunities, often in an international setting, including graduate education, research and experiential learning, nonprofit or political service, and foreign language study.

Distinguished fellowships and scholarships provide unequalled experiences for personal and professional growth, and provide students a unique way to represent the Mount’s mission to become ethical leaders who see and seek to resolve the problems facing humanity.

Facts and Figures

There are 23 current fellowship students. This year four students are competing for Fulbright Student Awards for Italy, Rwanda, New Zealand and Taiwan. Since its inception, the Office of Competitive Fellowships has helped Mount students from business, science, education and liberal arts win highly prestigious awards:

6 Fulbright Teaching Assistant Awards

2 Fulbright Study/Research Awards

4 Goldwater Scholarships

2 US-UK Fulbright Summer Institute Awards

1 Boren Scholarship

1 James Madison Fellowship

Many others have been semi-finalists and honorable mentions for the Marshall Scholarship, Gates Cambridge Scholarship, Rotary Global Grant Scholarship, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and the Department of Defense SMART Scholarship.

JULIA BAER, C’21 CHEMISTRY & BIOLOGY

Julia is a 2020-21 recipient of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the preeminent undergraduate award for students intending to pursue research careers in natural science, mathematics and engineering. This summer she completed two independent research projects developing scientific instrumentation for an inductively heated pyrolysis system with Associate Professor of Chemistry Garth Patterson, Ph.D., and constructing a 3D model of the ASCC2-diubiquitin complex with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Patrick Lombardi, Ph.D.

PAIGE BUCHANAN, C’22 INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

Paige completed two internships this summer as a project management intern working in the Global Technology Division at Prudential and as a research assistant with Associate Professor of Economics Alejandro Cañadas, Ph.D., where she studied the effects COVID-19 has on international finance, particularly impact investments and environmental, social and corporate governance. She is also a Division I track and field student-athlete.

COLLINS NJI, C’23 COMPUTER SCIENCE & DATA SCIENCE

Collins completed a remote summer internship at CSET, a policy research organization within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Last summer he interned at Enforme Interactive in Frederick, Maryland. He also completed internships at FunNode, a startup in San Francisco, JUV Consulting, a marketing company in New York, and Google DeepMind Technologies in London where he was a visiting student.

TAYLOR RADELL, C’22 POLITICAL SCIENCE & ECONOMICS

This summer Taylor participated in the American Enterprise Institute’s Summer Honors Program where students discussed and debated the most pressing issues facing the country and the world with the goal of providing a deeper understanding of contemporary public policy, appreciation for dialogue across ideological divides and networks to pursue a career in policy. Together with Fellows Harry Scherer, C’22, and Rebekah Balick, C’22, they started an American Enterprise Institute Executive Council at the Mount. Taylor also participated in the United Nations Intensive Summer Program, where she was immersed in the political dynamics and inner workings of the U.N.

JOHN-PAUL HEIL, C’15 HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, ITALIAN STUDIES & ENGLISH

John-Paul was a finalist for the 2015 Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award to Italy and the recipient of a 2020 Fulbright Research Study Award to Italy. He earned his master’s degree from the University of Chicago in 2016 and is currently a doctoral candidate working on his dissertation titled “Virtue and Vice in the Political World of Renaissance Naples.” He is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of History at the Mount.

SARAH (BONSON) KRUEGER, C’17 CHEMISTRY

Sarah was an honorable mention for the Goldwater Scholarship and an honorable mention for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) while at the Mount. She won the NSF GRFP the following year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is a doctoral candidate in organic chemistry.

KATE HEINTZELMAN, C’19 ENGLISH, FRENCH & THEOLOGY

Kate was the recipient of a 2019 Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award in Luxembourg. She was an editor of the Mount’s humanities journal Moorings and is currently working toward a certificate in Lay Catholic Ministry and pursuing a master’s degree in religion and literature at Yale Divinity School.

“Applying for prestigious awards requires wordsmithing and soul-searching. I learned this firsthand 15 years ago when I competed for, and won, the highly competitive Marshall Scholarship. Through the Office of Competitive Fellowships, my colleagues and I seek to offer compassionate guidance to the Mount’s brightest students, challenging them to perfect their talents and to pursue ambitious aspirations with the hope of addressing, understanding and even solving the myriad problems facing our world.”

JAMIE GIANOUTSOS, PH.D.