Meet Our Scholars
Daniel Gomez“Our mission was to provide the kids with an environment where they could freely express themselves through sports, music, crafts, and several other activities.”
Colby College
Making Change, Person to Person
Last January more than two dozen students from Colby College, including three Davis UWC Scholars, traveled to a school named for Mahatma Gandhi in northeastern India to teach 250 young people music, dance, poetry, English, and current world issues. The results were — in the Colby students’ own words — “incredible ... amazing ... intense ... having an impact capable of lasting in our absence.”
Munkhtsetseg Ayurzana“Everything was going really hard. I thought, ‘First the economy needs to get better, and people’s lives need to get better. I need to do something about that.’”
Skidmore
Making a Musical Difference
When Munkhtsetseg Ayurzana was a preschooler in Mongolia’s capital of Ulan Bator, her mother saw, and heard, something special in her little girl. “My mom tells me I would put different levels of water in these cups, and play them,” says “Mugi.” Her parents, both engineers, brought their daughter to the Music and Dance School of Ulan Bator. She spent 12 years there, studying violin very seriously while she watched her country struggle through the transition from a Soviet satellite to a market economy.
Felix Forster“Graffiti art allows teenagers to gain their own fulfillment and street credit and respect, which most of them need, and, if channeled, it allows them to do that in a legal manner. For the greater community, graffiti art can help deal with gang violence, which has soared in this city.”
Lafayette College
Making Dreams Work
Like so many other urban communities in the U.S. and around the world, Easton, Pa., home of Lafayette College, has its population of inner-city teenagers whose futures are far from secure. Lafayette junior Felix Forster isn’t from that world — he’s a UWC-USA graduate from northeastern Germany — but he is finding ways to help local young people learn how to believe in themselves and create hope in their lives.
Yohanne Kidolezi“He said, ‘I know that some good is going to come of you. You come from all over the world, and you will make this world a better place.’ ”
Middlebury College
The Chance of a Lifetime
One evening in rural Tanzania, when a teenage boy named Yohanne Kidolezi came home from 12 hours in his family’s rice, corn, bean, and peanut fields, his mother handed him an oddly spelled note. It said something about Dar Es Salaam, United World College, and an interview in three days.
Carolyn Taylor“We held a campus-wide event, a trade negotiation simulation — and all 19 of the participants [in the global trade course] were there. They spoke in their native tongues, and we had interpreters for four of those languages: Russian, Spanish, French, and Chinese.”
Monterey Institute of International Studies
Davis UWC Scholars Become Fellows at the Monterey Institute
The Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) in California is among the most international learning communities in higher education: More than a third of its 750 students comes from outside the United States, and 90 percent of its American students have some experience abroad. Primarily a graduate school, MIIS blends academics with the building of practical skills and experience for internationally oriented careers.
Dr. Margaret Early“Mixing young people from many different nationalities and parts of the world — that seems like a very good idea.”
University of Florida
Davis Philanthropy Leverages Other Donors
Arthur Koenig meets with students at Amherst College after the announcement of the Koenig Scholarship Fund, which will provide scholarships for students from Latin America and Africa, support their academic program, and sponsor annual recruitment trips to those regions. With Koenig is Elvis Maradzike ’10 of Harare, Zimbabwe.
Josh Grehan“The opportunities that have been provided to me while I was young have allowed me to end up where I am now.”
Princeton
Princeton Honors Graduating Davis UWC Scholar
Raised in Saskatchewan, Josh spent much of his childhood living in native villages, where his mother worked as a civil-rights advocate. That led him to focus on social justice and public policy at Princeton, where he was active on many levels. “He is a natural leader,” said Professor Marta Tienda, his senior thesis advisor.
The Davis United World College Scholars Program is the world’s largest privately funded international scholarship program: supporting over 2,400 undergraduates from 146 nations.
