Fairhaven’s Adventure Learning Grant Program Provides Unique Travel Opportunities to Western’s Students
Western’s Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies annually rewards three students from the university with an Adventure Learning Grant – a $20,000 stipend that lets students travel abroad in an effort to add to their education in a way that only leaving the country can do.
The grant was started by the recently deceased David Mason, a retired Fairhaven professor, in an attempt to enable more students to learn abroad.
Fairhaven faculty member Niall Ó Murchú, the director of the program, said students must write two essays before an interview for the grant. The first essay focuses on what the students hope to learn through exploring a new part of the world and a new culture. The second essay is more personal, asking the students to explain their educational journey and how they want to expand it abroad.
Zi Zhang, a senior at Western from Seattle, was awarded an Adventure Learning Grant last year and is currently overseas on his trip.
Zhang has always had a love for skateboarding and focused both of his essays on this and how skateboarding culture will be the primary focus of his travels.
“I remember during the application process I was talking about my idea with a few friends of mine,” said Zhang. “Some of my friends thought it was a good idea while others thought I was insane.”
The risk paid off as Zhang was awarded the $20,000; he began his trip in South Africa where he stayed in Cape Town, assisting master’s degree students at the University of Cape Town with Biology research. In his spare time he skateboarded around the city and met locals with similar interests and saw how skateboarding culture differed in South Africa compared to the United States.
Zhang said that he also took away something from this portion of his trip that he didn’t expect.
“During my time in South Africa I learned that skateboarding has the ability to dissipate racial lines and connect people,” said Zhang, who is in China on the second leg of his grant looking to follow his passion of skateboarding into another new continent.
Sarah Sasek, a junior from Grand Rapids, Michigan, is preparing to travel to Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon in September for her grant. Sasek plans to explore how indigenous stories, culture and spirituality around water are used as a tool in the resistance movements that safeguard their communities.
“Indigenous leadership is playing a central role in the current wave of fossil fuel resistance, and I want to learn how I can be an ally in protecting indigenous culture and resource sovereignty. I'm driven by my hope to see a healing of the relationship between humans and their environment,” said Sasek. “I hope to learn how to be a better activist and advocate for Environmental Justice.”
Sasek said she is hoping to apply what she will learn on this trip into creating her concentration at Fairhaven College when she returns to the U.S.
The ALG has provided Zhang, Sasek and many others opportunities that they would not have had without the help of the stipend; past ALG recipients have travelled to such locations as Peru, Egypt, Kenya and Bolivia.
To learn more about the ALG program, visit www.fairhaven.wwu.edu/adventure-learning-grant.