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11. Why Visit the United Kingdom: Confession of a Journeyman Fellowship Advisor
- University of Arkansas Press
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11 WhyVisittheUnitedKingdom ConfessionofaJourneymanFellowshipAdvisor MARK BAUER Mark Bauer, associate director of the Office of International Education and Fellowship Programs at Yale University, focuses his fellowship advising on the U.K. and Irish fellowships. He has taught at Yale since 1996—first for the English Language Institute, a summer program for advanced international students, and later for the English Department. He also serves as the writing tutor of one of Yale’s residential colleges and is a member of the NAFA board. Getting Started Ijoined Yale’s young office of International Education and Fellowship Programs in May of 2001 as a half-time fellowship advisor, charged with helping students prepare for U.K. and Irish fellowship competitions and with administering Yale’s endorsement and/or selection process for these awards. As the writing tutor for one of our residential colleges, I had helped students with their fellowship essays for a number of years (though never with a Marshall or Rhodes essay). But I knew nothing about the 99 McCray_Ch11.qxd 6/26/07 5:16 PM Page 99 100 • Mark Bauer education systems in the United Kingdom and Ireland, nothing of use about Oxford or Cambridge, or the federated colleges and institutes that comprise the University of London, let alone about universities such as Warwick, Edinburgh, or Trinity College, Dublin. Fortunately, that June, NAFA had its first national conference. I went to Tulsa as a veritable sponge for all things having to do with the Marshall, Mitchell, Rhodes, and the brand new Gates/Cambridge and came away with enough basic information to guide me and my students through that first fall fellowship season. I leaned mightily on faculty and deans who had administered and advised for these scholarships before me, and I shamelessly learned with my students as they researched various programs. When they asked questions that stumped me, I e-mailed Elliot Gerson orTerri Evans (the Boston Marshall officer at the time). When the dust cleared that first year, I knew I had cobbled together a patchwork understanding, and nothing more. So it was with great excitement that I joined Betsy Vardaman and Ann Brown and Suzanne McCray and the rest of our team for NAFA’s first site visit to the United Kingdom. Several things stand out from that first trip that have been particularly helpful to me as a fellowship advisor. Even our short time in London was enough to make it very clear what an extraordinary depth and range of academic and cultural resources the city itself makes available to our students. Without the opportunity to have visited the British Library, the British Museum, the National Gallery, and Westminster Abbey (on our first trip) and the Tate Modern, the Courtauld Institute, I would not be able to speak to my students about the holdings of these institutions and the excitement, rewards (and frustrations) of studying in a great city. Specific Institutions and Resources I learned that LSE, poised in the heart of the City, close to Bush House (home of the BBC) and the Inns of Court, like UCL and Kings, makes excellent use of London’s resources, its media and government offices and officials, as well as the constant stream of visiting academics, business leaders, and other international policy officers; its array of taught master’s programs draws on these resources and the strength of its faculty, but does so unevenly. In its effort to market a broad range of niche master’s courses as a means of generating income for the school and its research programs, McCray_Ch11.qxd 6/26/07 5:16 PM Page 100 [34.229.50.161] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:54 GMT) some courses are better conceived than others and provide better supervisions for their students. Our visits allowed me to do more than to encourage my students to carefully research the quality of the programs they are considering; the visits also gave me contact information for faculty in wellestablished programs, information that I pass on to my students to help them in their research. Indeed, these contacts at each of the universities we visited have become an invaluable advising resource in themselves. Not only do I give students the names of pertinent contacts, I also e-mail from time to time people whom we met on our trips with questions about programs; and these e-mails in turn invariably introduce me to other faculty members who can be of assistance to my students. On the subject of researching programs...