Bates College senior Adilene Sandoval of Mattawa, Wash. wins prestigious Thomas J. Watson Foundation fellowship.

Sandoval is one of only 42 graduating seniors from 33 U.S. colleges to receive the grant for international travel and exploration

by Bates College

Lewiston, ME (05/22/2023) — Bates College senior Adilene Sandoval of Mattawa, Wash. is among 42 graduating seniors from 33 U.S. colleges receiving grants from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation for international travel and exploration in 2023-24.

The Thomas J. Watson Fellowship is a one-year grant for purposeful, independent exploration outside the U.S., awarded to graduating seniors nominated by one of 41 partner institutions. Watson Fellows conceive orginal projects, deciding on their own where to go, who to meet and when to change course, producing a year of personal insight, perspective and confidence. The fellowship was started in 1968 and comes with a stipend of $40,000.

A double major in sociology and environmental studies, Sandoval will draw on her Mexican-Indigenous heritage for her project, "Weaving Together Activism and Healing."

Traveling to Australia, Italy, Ethiopia, El Salvador, Colombia, and Guatemala, she will learn about various effective approaches, all focused on place, people, and justice, that instill healing and well-being for communities that have faced the social, institutional, and cultural violence of colonization.

At age 8, Sandoval and her family left the mountains of Michoacan, Mexico, and moved to the U.S. in search of a better life. In Mexico, she recalls, life revolved around her family and the land, whether she was helping her father fish for river crabs - chacales - or growing roses and medicinal herbs with her mother.

"It was a sacred cycle nurtured through generations of land stewards who passed down their teachings to my father, who then passed them on to me," she says.

Settling in Washington state, Sandoval and her family worked in industrial agriculture, harvesting apples, cherries, asparagus, and peaches. The symbiotic conversation between Sandoval and the earth was muted. "People were not seen as stewards of the land but rather as a labor force." That dynamic "leaves you mentally, physically, and emotionally depleted and disconnected."

After graduating from high school, Sandoval headed to Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, deeply mindful of her family's and home community's resilience. In addition to her studies at Bates, she is an active member of Raices Unidas, a digital marketing assistant for the college's Center for Purposeful Work, and a student ambassador for first-generation students through the college's Bobcat First program.

Last summer, Sandoval received an Otis Fellowship to study land stewardship, agriculture, and migration in Oaxaca, Mexico. She recalls watching a group of women there work on tapestries using earth-tone threads, dyed using plants and stones. Those fine threads helped weave together a picture for her of "ecological and social well-being," where "repair of ecosystem services contributed to cultural revitalization, and renewal of culture promoted the restoration of social and environmental wellbeing."

During her Watson year, Sandoval will seek to deepen and extend her understanding of the concept of community healing that she'd seen in Oaxaca, by volunteering and speaking with community members, organizers, healers, academics, writers, and psychologists in six countries.

"I will be able to explore the spectrum in which justice-oriented healing is occurring and how that could be implemented in our communities, institutions, and systems," she says.

Sandoval will seek ideas across six countries and five continents, from sovereignty and intergenerational healing within Aboriginal peoples of Australia to the role of community cultural wealth in facilitating healing from displacement in Black immigrant communities in Italy.

After her Watson year, Sandoval plans to pursue a Ph.D. in counseling psychology and begin a career in action-oriented research and counseling.

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