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<p><a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/03/19/davidson[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/03/19/davidson</a></p>
<p>My wife got this email from Davidson. She had loans from Davidson to pay off long after she graduated. This is a welcomed development for us as our HS Jr son has Davidson on his list. The different institution can and should work out aid options as they see fit to meet their particular goals. This another example.</p>
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<p>An article in The State describes Davidson’s new financial aid plan to eliminate loans from its financial aid packages by substituting grants and student employment to allow every student to graduate debt-free as a both a challenge and a “marketing coup”:</p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/16932079.htm[/url]”>http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/16932079.htm</a></p>
<p>Our big news is that my d. was just awarded a Kahn Institute Fellowship, which is one of the ways her college prepares students to do graduate-level research:</p>
<p>STUDENT FELLOWSHIPS
Each year, at the beginning of the Spring semester, the Director of the Institute invites members of the sophomore and junior classes to apply for fellowship in connection with projects that the Kahn Institute will support during the next academic year. </p>
<p>All project Fellows meet together weekly for a colloquium gathering and meal — a process of social and intellectual interaction that represents the core of the project. It is here that Fellows develop their research and discuss one another’s work-in-progress from the perspective of her/his own particular interests. In addition to these discussions, Fellows are encouraged to invite outside scholars and experts to participate in the research colloquium and to offer public events that are open to the academic community and the public. </p>
<p>Kahn Student Fellows are appointed for the duration of the project, and are required, along with Faculty Fellows, to participate in the project’s weekly research colloquium and meal, as well as the various special events organized by the project’s Fellows. Therefore, each student is expected to be able to commit to the project’s weekly schedule for the entire academic year.</p>
<p>Kahn Fellowships require a real commitment to scholarship, and that means developing research questions closely related to one of the yearlong projects, and spending the Fellowship year conducting the actual research. Student Fellows will be expected to read five or six of the key works in the field of their topic over the course of the summer preceding the project year and to develop at least three significant research questions, one of which will be pursued during the Fellowship year. Most students may not have had much experience defining a research topic or generating original research; therefore, the Kahn Institute has developed a two-part research orientation program for Student Fellows that consists of an introduction to available research tools in May, followed by a week-long research workshop in late August to help students develop and refine the focus of their research projects. </p>
<p>Student Fellowships carry a stipend of $3,000: $1,000 to be disbursed in two equal installments over the course of summer preceding the project year; and the remainder disbursed in equal bi-weekly payments following the academic year student payroll schedule. Please note that students who are appointed Kahn Fellows are not permitted to hold any other on-campus job during the course of the academic year.</p>
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<p>This is the topic:</p>
<p>UNDERGROUNDS AND UNDERWORLDS
Organizing Fellows: Kevin Rozario (American Studies) and Michael Thurston (English)
In the Underworlds of mythology, ritual, and poetry, and in Undergrounds of subterranean space (sewers, subways, cellars) and oppositional or avant-garde movements, things occur that are interesting and important. Both Underworlds and Undergrounds have existed for thousands of years in religious mythologies, in literary narratives and folk tales, and in political cultures, as well as in the interpretation and use of subterranean spaces, both natural and built. The creation of Underworlds into which characters descend and the use of Undergrounds in which revolutions are hatched have held meaning across wide spans of geographical and cultural space, and in every historical period. Some might look to Odysseus invoking the shade of the prophet Tiresias from the Underworld at the inaugural moment of the European literary tradition, while others see groups devoted to subversive ideas finding refuge in the catacombs under Rome in the first century BC; while still others pursue Gilgamesh into an Underworld, or trace Mao Tse-tung to caves in the mountains of China, where he harbors his revolutionary forces; or follows the Underground Railroad leading slaves to freedom; or examines Bohemia as a distinctive kind of creative space; or investigates the effects “blogging” on mainstream politics and journalism. The substantive areas of research that might be pursued within this framework are almost unlimited, and the organizers hope to bring together scholars from the broadest range of fields to pose a wide array of questions about that which goes on under the surfaces, in undergrounds and underworlds. Why have such spaces exerted such power over our imaginations? What are the material and symbolic functions of underground spaces, in urban development, in economic organization, and in social relationships? How does the presence of an underground shape how we inhabit and experience space above ground, whether physical or conceptual? To what extent might such spaces liberate us from the rules and constraints of the dominant and normative order above ground? Indeed, how have undergrounds and underworlds, as places and as metaphors, formed, deformed, and transformed the world we inhabit? The organizers view this project as enabling the broadest possible intellectual engagement, and so as long as the eyes of scholars are focused downward, under the surface, toward undergrounds and underworlds, a rich variety of perspectives, methodologies, and areas of research interest are encouraged.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.smith.edu/kahninstitute/about.html[/url]”>http://www.smith.edu/kahninstitute/about.html</a></p>
<p>She’s “stompin’ on the terra” , mini. It’s fun to watch her work. ;)</p>
<p>mini: That is cool. Neat program. Congrats to her. Lots of work but interesting. Maybe she will find the Phantom or better yet the eloi or is it the worlocks?</p>
<p>I think they selected her as the resident musicologist - Orpheus and etc., but also the underground returns to terra firma (Commendatore in Don Giovanni, etc.) Also, her Italian skills make her rather adept around Dante and such. (She also knows much about the impacts of underground earthquakes, e.g. tsunamis, firsthand, though I don’t think that was in her application. It was amazing, though, how, by chance, she took a geology course focused on natural disasters her very first term in school, and immediately got to put it to use.)</p>