Mary Wynne Kotschwar, a 1999 graduate of Oak Harbor High School and currently a University of Puget Sound biology major, is among a select group who have been awarded fellowships from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. As a result, Kotschwar will spend next year pursuing a project of her own design and choosing, studying endangered lemurs on the island of Madagascar.

Kotschwar has, in a way, been contemplating her Watson “wanderjahr” project for quite some time. She has been interested in lemurs since doing a sixth-grade project on the endangered species. Her project is called “Of Lemurs, Land, and Lore: The Sociocultural Niche of a Flagship Species.” As a breakaway microcontinent, Madagascar is home to many species that do not exist anywhere else, including the lemur.

“I seek to understand the context of conservation in Madagascar by examining the relationship between lemurs, Malagasy communities, and the land they share,” Kotschwar said.

Traveling around the island of diverse ecosystems and ethnicities, Kotschwar will study this relationship in and around major parks and reserves in each of four different regions.

“As I move from city, to village, to park and back out again, I hope to gain perspective of the bigger picture, while simultaneously learning from and about the individuals, animals, and institutions that it encompasses,” Kotschwar said.

Kotschwar is “pretty thrilled” about the opportunity, especially about getting to work side-by-side with domestic researchers in Madagascar.

The University of Puget Sound is one of 50 liberal arts colleges in the country participating in the Watson program, begun by the children of IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, Sr. The program provides its fellows with the chance to take stock of themselves, test their aspirations and abilities, and to develop a more informed sense of international concern.

“We look for extraordinary young men and women of extraordinary promise, individuals who have the personality and drive to become the leaders of tomorrow,” said Norvell E. Brasch, the executive director of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Program. “The program is designed to fund the most creative dreams of our fellows with a minimum of restrictions. The world is their canvas and we let them tell us how they want to paint it.”

Nearly 1,000 students nationwide applied for the awards, 200 were nominated by their colleges, and about 60 were awarded fellowships. Kotschwar and Buck DeFore, who will study the phenomenon of lake monsters around the world, are the eleventh and twelfth fellows named from Puget Sound since the university began participating in the Watson program in 1994.

The two will begin their adventures this summer and be out of the United States for an entire year.

For more information on the Watson Fellowship program, visit the Watson Foundation Web site at http://www.watsonfellowship.org or the University of Puget Sound Watson page at http://www.ups.edu/faculty/veseth/watson/home.htm.