Green Mountain College: Student Snapshot

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Tala Wunderler-Selby '08

Gilman scholarship pays for research in India

A $5000 grant to travel to India might sound like game-show winnings, but for Tala Wunderler-Selby '08, it means a window has opened for her onto a new and unfamiliar culture.

"I was stunned to get the email telling me I had won," said Wunderler-Selby. "India's cultural diversity is so rich - it's a dream for someone like me who loves to study cultures."

Wunderler-Selby had applied for the competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship for study at Pondicherry University in India in the spring '07 semester. Granted by the U.S. State Department's Institute of International Education, the $5,000 Gilman scholarship was awarded to 400 students out of 1,189 applicants. The scholarship encourages students to study abroad in non-traditional locations, especially those outside of Western Europe and Australia.

Wunderler-Selby is enrolled in Green Mountain College's Progressive Program, which allows students to self direct their educational program. She has designed her own major to combine art and cultural anthropology with a minor in Asian studies. For the past two summers, she has spent several weeks in China with a group of Green Mountain College students, conducting cultural anthropology research with Professor Mark Dailey through a Freeman Foundation Grant.

During her semester in India, Wunderler-Selby plans to study Hinduism, South Asian Architecture, an Indian Culture course, and the Tamil language, which is native to the region. She also plans to do an independent study while she's there - an ethnography on the traveling tribal peoples of the Pondicherry region.

"I think it's really important that young Americans get the chance to visit countries like India and China," says Wunderler-Selby. "Those two especially are going to play a major role in what happens in the world over the coming years and it's critical to get a better understanding of the cultures."

As part of her scholarship agreement, Wunderler-Selby will do a follow up project when she returns from her study abroad. She has proposed an exchange program which would link a poorly-resourced elementary school in India with a school in Vermont. She hopes that such a project would broaden the world views of both groups, but she also hopes it might encourage Indian children to remain in school, which she says is a major problem.

The Gilman Scholarship is a congressionally funded program is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State and is administered by the Institute of International Education. It particularly encourages study abroad among students who would otherwise not consider it for financial constraints.