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IGLOOS AND BAMBOO: Watson Fellowships allow a pair
of Pomona '06 graduates to travel to the arctic and the
tropics on research adventures.
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One is heading to the arctic. The other is setting off for
the tropics. But Pomona’s latest
Watson Fellowship
recipients, Megan Groth ’06 and Laurel McFadden ’06, share a
sense of adventure that is sure to make for fascinating
year-long overseas research trips. Both Groth and McFadden
start their journeys this summer.
The prestigious grants provide $25,000 for students to
pursue independent travel and study. One key Watson rule: Groth and McFadden can’t return to the U.S. at any time
during the year-long fellowship.
Laurel McFadden: Icy Adventures Ahead
 Following
her junior year, Laurel McFadden ’06 spent a month living on
a windswept Norwegian fjord, where she worked freezing,
14-hour days studying an obscure bird known as the little
auk. The research required her to constantly be reaching her
arms into dark, stinking bird holes. Occasionally, the birds
bit, and she was constantly bombarded from above.
But
McFadden loved working in the barren beauty of the arctic,
with breathtaking views of glaciers and the chance to spot
reindeer running free. “It was such a crazy adventure,” says
McFadden, who went on the trip to help with research
conducted by Assistant Professor of Biology Nina Karnovsky.
An even crazier adventure lies ahead for McFadden. With her
Watson Fellowship, she sets off this summer with plans to
visit four of the northernmost settlements in the Arctic
Circle, located in Canada, Greenland, Norway and Russia. In
a project called “Life in the Midnight Sun and Polar Night:
Images of Arctic Survival,” McFadden will take photographs
to document life in these extreme climes.
Planning the trip has been tricky, and she likely will
travel by charter flights, train and even an icebreaker ship
to reach her destinations. For the first segment of her
trip, she will travel by icebreaker to the remote Inuit
community of Resolute in Canada. The smallest details have
to be thought through, including figuring out how she will
get food. “It’s not like these places have restaurants,”
says McFadden, who graduated with a Science, Technology and
Society major.
Still, McFadden has plenty of experience with immersing
herself into new cultures. Before her Norway trip, McFadden
spent a semester in bustling Beijing despite having no
background in Chinese. During her time in Norway for the bird research, she
lived at a Polish research station, sharing a Pomona
dorm-sized room with seven other people.
While McFadden grew up on a farm in sunny, citrus-scented
Fillmore, Calif., she quickly warmed to the icy grandeur
found in the world’s northern reaches, and is eager to
return. “I remember feeling just incredibly at home there,”
she says.
Megan Groth: A Building Fascination with Bamboo
Megan Groth ’06 fell in love with bamboo architecture in the
strangest place:
Florence, Italy, a Renaissance city full of
bricks-and-marble structures.
Groth admits she may have been in a slight state of
delirium, as she and other students studying abroad in
Syracuse University in Florence’s pre-architecture program
had been up for 36 straight hours completing a project.
 Some of the other students nodded off during a visiting
Colombian architect’s slide presentation about bamboo
architecture. Groth was enthralled. “It’s just that movie
moment where ... nothing else really matters,’’ recalls
Groth. “My mind was going a million times a minute.”
A biology major at Pomona, Groth found her career plans had
slowly shifted over to architecture. She realized that
bamboo, being a sustainable, eco-friendly building material,
was the perfect bridge between her two interests.
Groth’s groggy colleagues in Florence couldn’t understand
her excitement about the bamboo presentation: “They were
like, ‘OK, Megan, whatever.’” She rushed home to tell her
Italian host family – she had to tell someone – but her
house mom didn’t get it either. “Bamboo? Why you?,” the
woman asked.
The folks who dole out the Watson Fellowships did get it,
however, and Groth this year will be traveling to China,
Japan, Costa Rica and Ecuador to study the art, culture and
practice of bamboo home design.
Her first stop will be Beijing, China, where she will
re-immerse herself in a language program (she had studied
abroad in Beijing two years earlier). Beijing is home to the
headquarters of the International Network for Bamboo and
Rattan, where she will gather information before heading to
southern China. There, charitable groups are involved in
building bamboo homes for the poor. Japan offers fewer
current construction projects, but the country has a rich
history of bamboo architecture for Groth to study.
Costa Rica and Ecuador will provide the most hands-on
opportunities. She hopes to help with the construction of
bamboo homes and live for a time with a family that already
dwells in one. Groth plans to eventually attend
architectural school, but not until she has spent a year
traveling the globe enrolled in her self-styled Bamboo U.
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