April 19, 2007

Contact:   Bill Giduz

Two Davidson seniors recently received $25,000 fellowships from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation for year-long inquiries abroad that they proposed. Omer Hashmi of Norcross, Ga., and Amy J. Reid of Falls Church, Va., both wrote proposals for projects that concern their identity.

Hashmi, a second generation American raised in a traditional Islamic family, will travel to seven countries to study how Islamic schools prepare students for lives both as Muslims and as citizens of the modern world. For more on Hashmi's

	(l-r) Amy Reid and Omer Hashmi have won Watson Fellowships for international study projects.

project, click here.

Reid, the daughter of a white mother and black father, will compare and contrast multi-racial identites inBrazil and Namibia, two countries with large populations of multi-racial citizens. For more on Reid's project, click here. 

Davidson is one of fifty institutions invited to annually submit projects from seniors to the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. The Fellowship Program offers college graduates of exceptional promise a year of independent exploration outside of the United States in the form of a focused project of their own devising.

Mrs. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. established the Foundation as a charitable trust in 1961 to honor her late husband and since the inception of the Fellowship Program in 1968, the Watson Foundation has granted more than 2,300 Watson Fellowship awards with stipends totaling more than $29 million.

Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,700 students. Since its establishment in 1837 by PResbyterians, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine.

###

Posted By: Bill Giduz