CIC invites applications for campuses to host a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow in the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 academic years. The CIC Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows (WWVF) program enables colleges and universities to host a distinguished Fellow for a weeklong residential program of classes, seminars, workshops, lectures, and informal discussions. Fellows are prominent artists, diplomats, journalists, business leaders, and other nonacademic professionals who lead students, faculty members, campus staff, and community members in substantive dialogue. The program allows institutions to move beyond the typical one-evening, drop-in talk of the college lecture circuit and, instead, provides opportunities for more complicated issues to be explored over several days, ongoing relations to be established, and meaningful connections to take place.
Four new individuals have joined the roster of more than 125 Fellows available to visit campuses.
Victoria Bond is a composer, conductor, and lecturer. Her works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, and opera have been lauded by the
New York Times as “powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding.” Her most recent opera,
Clara, premiered at the Berlin Philharmonic in 2019. She is the first woman awarded a doctorate in orchestral conducting by the Juilliard School.
Theresa Brown is a registered nurse, nursing instructor, and author of the
New York Times bestseller
The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives. Her
New York Times opinion series, “Bedside,” examines health care from a nurse’s point of view. She also has a quarterly column in
The American Journal of Nursing.
Paul Dresher is a music composer noted for his ability to integrate diverse musical influences into his own unique personal style. He was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition and has received commissions from the Library of Congress, the San Francisco Ballet, and Walker Arts Center. In recent years, Dresher’s work has moved beyond the concert hall and opera house into the visual arts with Sound Maze, a hands-on interactive exhibition of a dozen of his large-scale invented musical instruments.
Ambassador
David McKean currently serves as a senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, where he is writing a book about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his ambassadors in pre-WWII Western Europe, to be published in 2020. In his long career, McKean served as U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, director of policy planning at the U.S. Department of State, and chief of staff to Senator John F. Kerry. He is a recipient of the U.S. Department of State’s Distinguished Honor and Superior Honor Awards.
Host campuses often plan visits that complement their distinctive missions and reinforce important themes. Fellow
Hiram Larew visited
Hood College (MD) in September 2019. Recently retired, Larew guided international food security programs as director of the Center for International Programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. As director, he authored or co-authored numerous government-related strategies, briefings, position papers, and impact assessments focused on global food security. He served as sustainable agriculture advisor to the United Nations and the U.S. Department of State and as a Brookings Institution fellow in agriculture. Larew is an accomplished poet. His work, twice nominated for Pushcart prizes, has appeared in nearly 100 journals, books, and collections, including
Rhino, the
Washington Review,
Louisiana Literature, and
Fledgling Rag. He has been selected for residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Rope Walk, the Weymouth Center in North Carolina, Bread Loaf, and the Catskills Poetry Retreat.
After Larew’s visit, Paige Eager, professor of political science and director of the Center for Global Studies, said: “It was a wonderful gift to have Hiram Larew spend the week with us at Hood College. He is an exceptional human being and made such a connection with our students, faculty members, and staff. He came to each class, roundtable discussion, and event with such genuine interest in getting to know all of us and in sharing his passion for his life’s work on food insecurity and poetry, too.”
Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow Hiram Larew engaging with Hood College (MD) students in a coastal studies and a creative writing class in September. (Photos courtesy of Hood College)
The combination of Larew’s deep knowledge of food security and international relations, coupled with his passion for poetry and human connections made his visit to Hood College particularly dynamic. During classroom visits, he spoke to students in social work and social justice, coastal studies and environmental science, creative writing, and global relations. “I was impressed with the students’ eagerness to engage, challenge, and think forward across disciplines,” Larew remarked of his classroom visits. Participants commented on the innovative nature of his public lecture “Looking into the Bare Cupboard: Poetry of Hunger.” After the talk, Larew facilitated audience participation by having guests read hunger-focused poetry written over centuries, encouraging attendees to consider their understanding of hunger as well as the role poetry may play in standing up to it.
During his visit, Larew served as an example of someone who lives his values. He worked alongside Hood College students and colleagues at the Frederick Rescue Mission where they served 150 hot lunches to local residents. Larew also participated in a discussion with the Frederick Food Security Network, a college and community partnership garden, and spoke at a Rotary luncheon as the guest of Hood College President Andrea Chapdelaine. During these events, Larew commended the way the college works shoulder to shoulder with key community stakeholders on local challenges of great importance.
Individuals interested in facilitating the visit of a WWVF Fellow to their campus should review the
online roster of more than 125 Fellows and complete the simple online
Campus Request Form. CIC staff are available to help interested campuses determine which of the visiting Fellows might best fit a campus’ needs. For more information, please contact
visitingfellows@cic.nche.edu or
visit the program website.