Five Seniors Awarded Rockefellers

Five seniors were chosen as the recipients of the Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship last weekend.

In existence since 1966, the Rockefeller Fellowships grant $14,000 towards a year of post-graduate study abroad for Harvard seniors.

This year's recipients are Carl "Larry" L. Malm '00 of Leverett House and Blue Hill, Maine; Sarun Charumilind '00 of Leverett House and Chesterfield, Missouri; Sarah D. Kalloch '00 of Kirkland House and Hamilton, Massachusetts; Charisa A. Smith '00 of Eliot House and Lawrenceville, New Jersey, and Sinead B. Walsh '00 of Winthrop House and Dublin, Ireland.

Malm will travel to Israel and the Palestinian National Authority to continue working with teenagers he has met through his involvement in "Seeds of Peace," an American summer camp resolving the differences between Palestinian and Jewish children.

He said the independent nature of the fellowship program is daunting, but that he is looking forward to the challenge. Although the program provides some guidance at a retreat featuring previous Rockefeller fellows, students are responsible for formulating their own projects and for finding living arrangements.

"Being in a program where I will be much less sheltered than I am here is the most exciting part of the project," he said.

Charumilind plans on traveling to Lusaka, Zambia, in an effort to learn more about the AIDS epidemic, continuing the line of research of his thesis, which is about AIDS in Thailand. He said adjusting to the culture will be difficult, but that it is his main goal.

Kalloch will travel to Lake Victoria, Kenya, working with environmental scientists studying natural resources and community dependence on them.

Smith intends to work in educational programs for the victims of domestic violence in the Dominican Republic.

Walsh will travel to India to investigate human rights organizations and economic development.

This year, recipients of the Rockefeller scholarships were selected from among 40 applicants nominated by their House Fellowships advisors.

On Friday, about a month after applications for the fellowship were due, applicants were assigned Saturday morning interviews. They were notified about whether they had won the fellowship later that afternoon.