Institutional Grants and Fellowships

Each fall, the Student Fellowships Committee makes multiple awards for up to $2,000, each supported by an endowed fund established in 2007 by Peter Grua ’76 and Mary O’Connell ’76. These awards support faculty-mentored student research in all disciplines.

Grua/O’Connell Research Awards can be used in conjunction with other sources of funding from the College (e.g., a College-awarded fellowship) or external sources (e.g., a faculty grant); however, preference will be given to applicants without other sources of funding. Normally, these awards will not exceed $2,000.

Awards from this fund support:

• students’ research expenses such as purchasing of books and equipment, publishing research results, or any combination of these expenses, or
• *student travel that will substantially enhance students’ honors projects or research being conducted under the mentorship of a faculty member (e.g., travel to library/archive or to another location to conduct research, or travel to a conference to present results).

Normally, these awards will not exceed $2,000.

Grady Aldrich '18: Advanced Material Investigation Through Sculpture 

Thanks to the Grua O’Connell Research award I received I was able have an enriching experience over the course of my independent study and I was able to experiment with many new materials that would have been otherwise inaccessible to me. The grant primarily covered the cost of art making materials, especially larger quantities of rubber for mold making and other materials for experimentation and casting. I explored different techniques as related to mold making and casting, and I continued to push my ideas throughout the project to create numerous works that sought to consider ideas related to gender, sexuality, and identity.

In the beginning of my project, I focused most of my time on making molds and exploring my ideas through mass-production. As my interests continued to shift, so did my use of materials, moving from this more systematic approach to one that was centered in hand building with clay. Although the central themes I was examining remained constant throughout the semester, with each subsequent work the forms and pieces I made morphed, with the resulting work consisting of three ceramic objects as part of a Decorative Object Series. These objects, informed by previous works that I had developed over the semester, were not only emblematic of my ideas as they continued to mature, but also my larger concern with the relationship between art objects, decoration, and the perceived “beauty” of the works.

I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity as it allowed me to further explore my artistic ideas with materials that I would not normally utilize. Through this experience I was able to consider themes that had consistently shown up in my work but required the depth and time that an independent study provided to fully come to fruition and be realized within a complete art piece. After gaining such insight in terms of my own creative process, I am excited to continue forward with the material knowledge and conceptual background that I gained from this experience.

With the aid of their faculty mentors, Bowdoin students are able to apply for mini-grants to support academic year undergraduate research and travel. Applications are accepted monthly and awards range from $200–$800. Students may only receive mini-grant funding once per semester. For details regarding application requirements, visit the Monthly Mini-Grants page.

Established by Robert H. Edwards, President Emeritus (1990-2001) and Blythe B. Edwards, this fellowship is designed to foster summer research and learning by students in the creative and performing arts. This may be accomplished through faculty-mentored and/or structured training in the creative or performing arts (including music, theater and dance, the fine arts, creative writing, and film studies).

The Micoleau Family Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts was established by Charles ’63 and Judith Micoleau and their son, Tyler Micoleau ’91. It supports a fellowship to Bowdoin undergraduates to foster research and/or structured training in the creative and performing arts (including music, theater and dance, the fine arts, creative writing, and film studies). Preference will be given to fellowships in theater with a secondary preference to those students whose state of residence is Maine.

The Nellie C. Watterson Summer Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts was established in 2007 by Paul and Jennifer Korngiebel, classes of '88 and '87 respectively, to honor Professor William Watterson and his mother. The Watterson Summer Fellowship is designed to foster summer research and learning by students in the creative and performing arts. This may be accomplished through faculty-mentored and/or structured training in the creative or performing arts (including music, theater and dance, the fine arts, creative writing, and film studies).

Evelyn Beliveau '19: Painting and Art History in Italy

This summer, I attended Brandeis in Siena, a Brandeis University program exploring early Renaissance art at the Siena Art Institute. Between July 11th and August 18th, I lived and studied with nine other students in the city of Siena, a UNESCO World Heritage site with preserved Medieval and Gothic buildings. The program provided an opportunity to discover the history of the region, as well as contemporary Tuscan culture, through the lens of art and art-making.

Formally, the program consisted of two academic courses, but it was much more than that. The art history and studio art courses were closely linked to each other, to site visits in cities around Tuscany, and to our everyday experiences in Siena. We explored developments in painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Romanesque and Gothic periods in the 13th-14th centuries through the beginnings of the Renaissance in the 15th century. In the studio art course, we took up the glazing technique used by Renaissance oil painters, which involves a monochromatic under-painting with color applied afterward in thin layers; we used this technique on still life and landscape paintings, figure paintings from the model, and copies from master works. Excursions during and outside of class time allowed us to see artworks created with the same techniques that we were learning in the studio, as well as works which marked major milestones in art history. These site visits took us to the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and many churches and architectural monuments in Siena, Florence, and San Gimignano. We also had the opportunity to view contemporary art at Galleria Continua in San Gimignano and at the Venice Biennale, an incredible event featuring more than a hundred contemporary artists from dozens of countries around the world. These instances prompted reflection about art’s changing role from the period of the Renaissance we were studying to the modern day. Overall, the site visits and course materials blended with our immersion in Sienese daily life to provide a culturally intensive experience.

This experience has had a profound effect on me. I encountered art in a way that I rarely do; visits to museums and churches felt at once like personal experiences of the artworks, with time to reflect on the profundity of each piece or location, and like class time, with details of the context and significance delivered on-site by knowledgeable professors. The stories of these works will stay with me for a long time. It is particularly powerful to think of the artists working in Florence in the 1420s and after, who were conscious that they were creating a new visual language— a language of humanism, a new respect for the human body and for Classical ideas, a new conception of space and humanity’s role in the world. These artists knew they were making breakthroughs in the realism of painting and sculpture or in the intentionality of architecture, and they cared deeply about the precedents they were setting. To walk from the art history class into the painting studio and work with the same techniques, in the same settings as these artists was profound in itself. We were just as active in the process of creating art as we were in learning about it. Furthermore, the history we learned about in class was visible in our daily life, walking around Siena; we were able to visit the Siena Cathedral, a beautiful mix of Romanesque and Gothic architecture, during lunch breaks or glance up at an archetypal Renaissance palazzo on our way home from class. In terms of my personal growth, the program has influenced my academic goals as well as my perspective on art. I am more certain than ever of my love of painting and my path as a Visual Art major, and I expect that concepts from the studio course this summer will directly inform my work in Visual Art courses at Bowdoin. The art history class has had just as strong an effect; my new understanding of the context of the oil painting tradition will give me a more nuanced perspective on my studio work, but I’ve also realized that I am passionate about art history for its own sake. My studies this summer, therefore, will affect my trajectory at Bowdoin and beyond.

Brandeis in Siena was an intensive, profound experience which broadened my understanding of art and art’s connection to specific locations and contexts. I fully experienced the cultural environment of Siena; I learned in great detail the developments in art production which led up to the blossoming of the Renaissance; and I created oil paintings intimately linked through subject matter and style to the location in which I was working. My time in Italy was incredibly valuable and will make its mark on my academic career at Bowdoin.