Flak wins prestigious Watson grant

Agnes Flak will spend the next year, as she proclaimed with a wide grin, "in seven countries."

Flak, who graduates in June with a print journalism and theater double major, is the recipient of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, awarded annually to students in several of the nation's elite liberal arts colleges.

The foundation's web site explains that the fellowship program "provides fellows an opportunity for a focused and disciplined year of their own devising -- a period in which they can have some surcease from the lockstep of prescribed educational and career patterns in order to explore with thoroughness a particular interest.

"During their year abroad, fellows have an unusual, sustained and demanding opportunity to take stock of themselves, to test their aspirations and abilities, to view their lives and American society in greater perspective, and, concomitantly, to develop a more informed sense of international concern."

The awards are generally offered to students from 50 outstanding private colleges and universities in the United States. The fellowships provide a $22,000 grant and the equivalent of a year of payments on a fellow's guaranteed student loans.