Browne named alternate for Watson, Matuzek wins Zeff
None of four students Rice nominated for the national Watson Fellowship received the award, but Wiess College senior Cynthia Browne was named one of five Watson Fellowship alternates. Wiess senior Emily Matuzek received the Zeff Fellowship, which is awarded annually to the Rice student who receives the most votes for a Watson nomination but does not receive the award or a position as an alternate. Browne said she will be notified by April 28 about whether she will receive the Watson.
The Watson Fellowship is awarded to 50 graduating seniors nationwide and carries a $22,000 grant for independent research abroad. Rice nominated four students for the Watson this year, Assistant Dean of International Scholarships Patty Bass said. In 2004, three Rice students won Watson Fellowships. At least one Rice student has received a Watson for the past 20 years.
If Browne receives a Watson, she will travel to Sri Lanka to study psycho-social intervention techniques for children who have been traumatized. Browne said she had originally intended to study children who were affected by Sri Lanka’s ongoing civil war but will now probably also include children disturbed by the December tsunami.
‘I want to look at the differences between how the formal humanitarian sector and the indigenous sector treat these children,’ Browne said. ‘Formal, non-governmental organizations like UNICEF are implemented through agencies. They have protocols and a bureaucracy, and the methods usually come from outside the culture, while indigenous systems have a long legacy within the culture.’
Browne said she became interested in the different types of treatment while volunteering at a UNICEF center in Africa that treated children who had been affected by the war in northern Uganda.
‘The mental health approach which uses Western counseling … has gotten a lot of [criticism] in the past for not being culturally appropriate … and perhaps [causing] more harm than good,’ Browne said.
Browne said she chose Sri Lanka because of the number of treatment methods used there. ‘I found a lot of different systems — people go to oracles, they will talk about their problems and people from the rest of the community will listen and contribute, and they have things like exorcists and shamans,’ Browne said.
Matuzek’s project idea also came out of interactions with children. She will travel to Denmark, India and Chile to study autistic children and their environments.
‘I will be studying the experience of being autistic in the three countries,’ Matuzek said. ‘I want to see how families view autism, what assistance the government gives, what schooling is available and what the attitudes toward autism are.’
Matuzek said she became interested in the disorder after working with an autistic child. ‘I started working as a therapist part-time for a girl who is autistic about two years ago, and I started working for a second family last summer,’ Matuzek said. ‘It’s been a job, but it’s been something I’ve gotten really interested in.’
Matuzek said she chose Denmark because it is similar to the United States in that autism is diagnosed often, but different in that it has a nationalized medicine system.
‘Denmark is doing very similar things as the United States as far as the theory is concerned, but they have all this money to back it up,’ Matuzek said.
India and Chile deal with autistic children differently than do the United States and Denmark, Matuzek said.
‘In India, autism was recognized as a disability in the late ’90s — so families can now receive funding — but non-governmental organizations are picking up a lot of the slack because the government doesn’t know how to deal with it,’ Matuzek said. ‘In Chile, they have separate facilities for special education kids. I want to [see what] the advantages and disadvantages [are] of having a system like that [versus] in America [where] the whole system is built around mainstreaming kids.’
Matuzek said she hopes ideas from Denmark, India and Chile can be applied in the United States.
‘America can try to take a page from what other [countries] are doing because [autistic] kids are the same everywhere — it’s just a matter of how we’re approaching it,’ Matuzek said. ‘I’m anxious to see other people’s ideas and what [they mean] to these kids.’
Matuzek and Browne each said most of their fellowship money would be spent on travel and accommodations.
A total of 188 students were nominated for the Watson by the 50 participating colleges and universities, Browne said.
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