Grants Enhance Overseas Experiences

A new endowment is helping students get even more out of their experiences abroad. The Dinah Dodds Endowment for International Studies provides grants to students to allow them to extend their stays in order to expand on work begun on their Lewis & Clark overseas study programs. The fund also provides faculty grants to enhance specific programs—for example, by covering unbudgeted equipment or technology, seminars, and other educational resources.

During the 2011–12 academic year, seven grants were awarded. Here’s a sampling:

Morocco, spring 2011: Program funding for participation in a workshop associated with the National Endowment for the Humanities, which gave students international research experience.

New Zealand, spring 2012: Student funding for a spring break research project focused on indigenous ecological knowledge, practice, and rights surrounding river protection versus exploitation.

India, fall 2011: A student grant that will fund additional time in India to teach in children’s shelters as part of a senior research thesis comparing the approaches to educating homeless children in India and the United States.

The endowment was recently established by Missy Vaux Hall in honor of Dinah Dodds, professor emerita of German. “Through the years, I’ve been struck by the depth of Dinah’s engagement at Lewis & Clark and by her dedication to her students,” says Hall, a longtime friend of Dodds. “This endowment honors Dinah’s commitment and carries forward her legacy in international education.”

Hall spent a year overseas when she was in college and understands the impact that such an experience can have on a student’s life. “I’m very committed to international education as a way to foster mutual problem solving and collaboration in this world,” she says. “If anything, it’s going to be more and more critical for people to have that experience, and I’m happy that this endowment will support that.”