Wednesday, January 7, 2015 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, January 7, 2015 // The Statement
5B
Since he graduated from the Uni-
versity of Michigan in May 2014, Louis
Mirante has hitchhiked via cargo ship
in the Maldives, attended a class taught
by the Dalai Lama on Tibetan Buddhism
and spent a month living in Chile.
Before Easter, the LSA graduate plans
to live in Southern India for a month or
more before he heads to Northern India
and, most likely, to Nepal to live and
teach at a monastery.
Mirante is traveling the world, but not
on his own dime: he is a part of the inau-
gural class of the LSA Bonderman Trav-
el Fellowship, and was given $20,000
to travel the world for eight months or
more.
Piloted with the class of 2014, the LSA
Bonderman Travel Fellowship grants
four LSA graduates each year the chance
to travel the world. They can go wher-
ever they want, when they want for eight
months or more.
The only restrictions?
Fellows must travel independently
and can only be with friends or family
from home or a travel group for up to 10
days. They must go to at least two regions
of the world and six countries, and are
discouraged from traveling to western-
ized countries, including Australia, New
Zealand, Canada and nations in West-
ern Europe.
2014 LSA graduates Tyler Mesman,
Erin Busbee, Ashline Hermiz and Louis
Mirante make up the first class of fel-
lows, selected from a pool of about 100
applicants in the spring of 2014.
Since leaving the U.S. on or by Aug.
31, collectively, they have traveled to
Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru,
Bolivia, Croatia, Hungary, Jordan, Tur-
key, Cyprus, Zimbabwe, South Africa,
India, Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore,
Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Malaysia.
The program is the brainchild of
David Bonderman, an investment advis-
er and businessman who graduated in
1963 from the University of Washing-
ton, which has hosted a similar program
for about two decades.
After
graduating
from
Harvard
University’s law school, Bonderman
received a Sheldon Fellowship, which
gave him the opportunity to travel the
globe. The experience had such a pro-
found impact on his life that he was
inspired to start the Bonderman Travel
Fellowship at the University of Wash-
ington in 1995. Today, Washington’s
Bonderman fellowship is awarded to
seven undergraduates and seven gradu-
ate students each year.
Bonderman’s daughter and her hus-
band are both University graduates, and
it was their idea to start the fellowship in
Bonderman’s name. Plans for the pilot
program began in September 2013, and
the first class of fellows was notified in
April 2014.
Mesman, who is from Grand Rapids,
began his travels in Istanbul on Aug. 25
and has since gone to Turkey, Cyprus,
Zimbabwe, South Africa and, for the
past month, India. He originally planned
on going to Israel as well, but had to
change his plans after it was placed on
the University travel restriction list.
Which brings up another program
rule: fellows cannot visit anywhere that
is restricted according to the Universi-
ty’s Travel Warning and Travel Restric-
tion Destinations. When they applied to
the program, all applicants submitted
a sample itinerary, and must work with
Rachel Reuter, the University’s Center
for Global and Intercultural Study’s
Health & Safety Coordinator, to ensure
their final itinerary is realistic and
doable.
In recent years, two Washington
Bonderman fellows have died abroad
— Jennifer Caldwell traveled with the
Fellowship in 2007 and died in a 2009
car accident in South Africa, and Alena
Suazo was travelling with the fellow-
ship in Guatemala when became ill and
died in 2011. Jordan said they encour-
age fellows to extensively research any
place they plan to travel to, and fellows
must e-mail the CGIS office every other
week with updates on their whereabouts.
Additionally, if fellows want to make
changes to their approved itinerary after
the program begins, these changes must
be approved by CGIS.
“It’s a hands off program,” Reuter
said. “But we’re certainly there if they
need it.”
After India, Mesman plans on going
to Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia and Viet-
nam. He also wants to try to go to Burma
and Laos.
“Each country and culture has its
own surprises that come along with it
and eventually you kind of learn to go
with the flow,” Mesman wrote in an
e-mail — Internet where he was staying
in India was not strong enough to sup-
port a video call. “I have actually been
more surprised by how similar people
are rather than the differences. I’ve been
surprised by the culture shocks between
each country though — going from Tur-
key to Zimbabwe is quite the physical
and cultural leap. I don’t have the oppor-
tunity to go back to the U.S. and push the
‘cultural reset button’.”
In addition to the basic stipulations,
Bonderman fellows budget their travels
themselves. They are given $8,000 up
front, and starting one month after they
leave the United States, they are given
$1,500 a month. Within their budget,
they must purchase University travel
insurance.
Reuter said managing a budget is part
of what makes the program a great learn-
ing experience. $20,000 may seem like a
lot, but over eight months expenses can
add up fast.
“Seeking out things that they wouldn’t
typically do if they had more money is
part of the experience,” Reuter said.
Hermiz said she was initially very
careful about budgeting her money, but
has found that travel is cheaper than she
expected.
“In the beginning I thought $1,000
per country would be appropriate,” she
wrote in an e-mail.
Hermiz has been to Turkey, Croatia,
Hungary, Jordan, Cambodia and Malay-
sia.
“I have found that I spend much less
than that and I really pay attention to
ways of saving money as well as when it
is OK to splurge,” she said.
During the first application cycle
for the program, around 100 seniors
applied. A selection committee consist-
ing of CGIS staff and faculty reviewed
18 finalists, and nine candidates were
interviewed. CGIS director Michael
Jordan said they hope to expand the pro-
gram gradually in the future, although
Bonderman’s daughter and her husband
plan to keep it as an undergraduate LSA
program.
Jordan said they look for students
who haven’t had significant internation-
al travel or study abroad experiences,
who are open to new experiences and
the kind of people who would make good
connections and reflect on their experi-
ences.
Before the fellowship, Mesman had
only been outside of the United States
once: to Spain in 2010 on an organized
high school trip. He described this expe-
rience as “insulated” because he stayed
with a group the entire time and didn’t
interact with locals or plan his own trav-
els.
“Even though I’m traveling indepen-
dently I am never truly alone,” he said.
“(There are) always new people to meet
in hostels and around.”
Mesman said the hardest part of
the experience, for him, has been the
“impermanence” of relationships with
the people he’s met while traveling.
“These relationships are temporary.
At some point either they or I have to
say goodbye and keep traveling,” he
said. “Wash, Rinse, Repeat. I’m really a
people person and I like having a sense
of community — so I miss the way it felt
to walk around campus and just run into
people that you already know instead of
just walking around as another face in
the crowd.”
Mesman doesn’t currently have a plan
to return home. After the eight months
of the fellowship ends, he hopes to travel
for as long as possible. He is also making
plans to travel with his mother after the
fellowship to wherever she chooses.
Like Mesman, Erin Busbee, who
majored in anthropology, rarely traveled
outside of the United States before the
fellowship. A varsity track athlete at the
University, she spent so much time prac-
ticing and competing that she wasn’t able
to study abroad either.
Busbee has been in South America for
almost five months, but she nearly didn’t
apply for the fellowship in the first place.
Two of her friends sent her information
about the program months in advance,
but she glossed it over while applying to
policy fellowships in the United States.
She always dreamed of traveling but
never thought something like the Bond-
erman fellowship would become a real-
ity.
“It kind of came naturally,” she said.
“Traveling is something I’ve always
wanted to do.”
Busbee said her experiences so far
have been greatly enriched by the people
she’s met in Santiago, Chile; Mendoza,
Argentina; Cordoba, Argentina; Buenos
Aires, Argentina; Montevideo, Uruguay;
Salvador, Bahia in Brazil; and Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil.
“Most of my experience has been
made by the people that I’ve met,” she
said. “Going to so many places is nice.
I’ve enjoyed experience different places,
but after a certain point, being in Chile,
Uruguay, Argentina, everything begins
to look the same to me and the languages
are similar. The people I’ve met and the
things I’ve done have stood out.”
Once Busbee leaves South America,
she will travel to South Africa and then
the Phillipines and Thailand. She also
hopes to add another country — if her
visa allows her to, she would like to go to
Mozambique after South Africa. If not,
she might try to go to Japan.
Busbee said, the fellowship has
opened her mind to a host of opportu-
nities she had never thought she would
experience before. It has been a learning
experience in every sense of the word.
“I’m thinking about things like living
abroad for a few years whereas I always
shied away from this sort of thing before,”
Busbee said. “I’m definitely more open
to not being in the United States and not
quite having an exact career path. I can’t
imagine being back and going to work
every day.”
Louis Mirante also said the fellow-
ship, for him, has been about meeting
and learning from the groups of people
he has met. He had previously traveled
in Europe and Mexico, but never to Asia
or South America, and said that going to
countries that aren’t dominated by the
European way of thinking was one of the
best experiences he had.
“You learn new ways of thinking,” he
said. “Internalizing these new ways of
thinking can help you learn about prob-
lems in new ways and think about solu-
tions to things you might not even have
considered to be problems.”
At the time of his interview, Mirante
was in the Maldives, a small island
nation off the coast of Sri Lanka that
wasn’t originally on his itinerary. He
decided to travel here after finding cheap
round trip tickets for a four-day trip —
but stayed for a month.
Mirante was in the Maldives when he
found himself in the middle of a water
crisis. After a fire at the country’s main
water plant, the entire northern part
of the country had no running water.
Mirante was in the Maldives the entire
time, and he saw how they responded to
the crisis, rationing out water from pub-
lic buildings and eventually, Sri Lanka
and India.
“The way that they distributed it was
from their main cultural centers, which
are the mosques,” he said. “I stood in line
for water at mosques with everyone else
so I could have something to drink. That
was definitely a really interesting expe-
rience.”
Mirante said he realized how much
more he engages with a place when he
does not set himself a date on when he is
leaving.
“When you have an expiration date
for an experience or a place, it really lim-
its how you think about traveling there,”
Mirante said. “I really go with the flow. If
I feel like its time for me to leave a place,
I leave. If I feel like I should stay longer,
I stay longer.”
Before the Fellowship began, Her-
miz’s only international travel was to
France with her high school French
class. She said the most surprising thing
was how prevalent Western culture is
internationally.
“In some places I was not expecting to
see Starbucks or KFCs everywhere,” she
said. “And it is not something that really
surprised me, but it saddens me to see
so many products that encourage skin
whitening and to hear many young Cam-
bodian girls state that they do not like
their skin because it is darker. I know
how pervasive the white beauty stan-
dard is, but it is really crushing to see just
how ingrained it is and how normative it
is in both western and non-western cul-
tures.”
Though study abroad programs at
the University can be expensive, the
Bonderman Fellowship is free for all
applicants. Mesman transferred to the
University from a community college
and only spent three years on campus.
He always dreamed of traveling, but
didn’t study abroad for financial reasons
and to make the most of his time in Ann
Arbor. When he discovered the Fellow-
ship, he said it was “too good to be true”
and dropped all of his job applications at
the time so he could focus on applying.
“I knew I would regret it for the rest of
my life if I didn’t at least apply,” he said.
“And now here I am.”
Mesman studied political science and
philosophy at the University. He origi-
nally planned on going into domestic
U.S. politics, but after traveling since
August, his plans have changed.
“I’ve been looking into careers that
are more internationally focused so I
can combine my passion for travel with
my work,” he wrote in an e-mail. “(I’m)
not exactly sure what that looks like
for me yet but I’ll begin exploring more
options once I get back to the U.S.”
All four fellows agreed that the fel-
lowship has been a life changing experi-
ence, but in different ways. Hermiz said
she has grown immensely because of her
travels. She plans on going into Social
Work, but said her experiences have
helped her understand that internation-
al issues are just as important as social
inequality in the U.S.
“I feel so much more independent now
than I did before I left,” she said. “I take
more risks and I am much more outgoing
and patient. I am also constantly able to
reflect on my experiences, but also ana-
lyze social issues in broader context.”
Mesman said the impacts of the Fel-
lowship on his life have forever changed
him.
“I don’t think I’ll fully understand
how it’s changed my life until it’s over
and even some months beyond that,”
Mesman said. “But right now I can say
that I feel like the Fellowship has made
me a more authentic me and tapped into
my passion for exploration and learning.
It’s simultaneously made me more confi-
dent and more humble about my under-
standing of the world and my place in
it. It’s definitely shifted my perspective.
There truly is nothing else like it.”
The 2015 application is open to any-
one who will have graduated between
December 2014 and May 2015. The
application requires a trip itinerary,
three essays and two recommendations.
Recipients will be notified by mid-Feb-
ruary.
T h e B o n d e r m a n F e l l o w s h i p :
E i g h t m o n t h s , $ 2 0 , 0 0 0 t o s e e t h e w o r l d
PHOTO COURTESY OF TYLER MESMAN
By Carolyn Gearig, Special Projects Manager