FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
Pitzer College Senior Awarded Watson Fellowship
Claremont, Calif. (March 26, 2002) – Siobhan O'Hara, a senior at Pitzer 
College in Claremont, Calif., awoke early the morning the names of this 
year's Thomas J. Watson Fellowship winners were to be posted on the Web 
at www.watsonfellowship.org.  
The phone rang while she was waiting for her computer to download the list 
of winners.  It was one of her professors, Paul Faulstich, calling to tell her 
she'd won.  "I was thrilled," exclaimed O'Hara, who is double-majoring in art 
and environmental studies at Pitzer.
"This is exciting news for Siobhan and for Pitzer," said Jim Lehman, 
professor of economics and a member of Pitzer's Watson Nominations 
Committee. "Siobhan is a terrific candidate: a fine artist, an accomplished 
rugby player, a committed environmentalist, an outstanding student. "
O'Hara's project, "Masking the Moon: Worldview, Aesthetics and 
Creation," will take her to Africa to study the carving and use of wooden 
masks. She came up with the name of her project "because we empathize 
with non-human elements in our universe by putting faces on them – like 
the man in the moon – or by making masks from them. A mask is a way of 
thinking presented in a visual form. Masks represent a human viewpoint of 
the world filtered through a cultural and historical context."
During her Watson year, O'Hara will study four mask-making 
traditions: the Kom and Fang of Cameroon, and the Dogon and Bambara of 
Mali. She will live in and around major cities like Foumban, Yaounde, 
Timbuktu and Bamako.
"I want to immerse myself in settings where masks express a 
culture's history, knowledge and worldview," she said. "I want to see how 
the relationship between people and art differs across cultures."
"The Watson year will allow Siobhan to grow as an artist, to stretch 
her understanding of the craft and context of mask-carving in a number of 
cultures," Professor Lehman noted. "It's a wonderful opportunity for her -- 
and one we deeply value."
"Finally, after four years of rigorous education, I can dedicate a whole 
year to my own passion for traveling and carving," said O'Hara, who hails 
from Anchorage, Alaska. "The Watson is a wonderful adventure for these 
wandering years between college and grad school."
O'Hara, who serves as president of the Pitzer Art Collective and 
captain of the Pomona-Pitzer women's rugby team, also was nominated 
this year for the Rhodes Scholarship, regarded as the world's most 
prestigious academic fellowship.  She made it all the way to the state finals 
in her native Alaska.
The Thomas J. Watson Foundation awarded 60 $22,000 fellowships 
to college seniors this year to pursue one-year independent research 
projects outside the United States. More than 1,000 students from 51 
participating institutions applied for these coveted awards. To qualify, 
students must first be nominated by their college or university, and then 
compete on a national level. The Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Program was 
created in 1968. Since that date, the program has granted more than 
2,000 awards with stipends totaling almost $26 million. 
Founded in 1963, Pitzer College is a nationally ranked undergraduate 
college of the liberal arts and sciences.  A member of The Claremont 
Colleges, Pitzer offers a distinctive approach to a liberal education by 
linking intellectual inquiry with interdisciplinary studies, cultural immersion, 
social responsibility and community involvement.
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Photo available upon request
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