Brent Otto '01 Awarded Watson Fellowship

Holy Cross senior Brent Otto has been awarded one of 60 fellowships from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation to pursue a year-long independent study of "The Faces of Catholic Education in India and Sri Lanka."

Otto, of Framingham, Mass., is a history major participating in the College's teacher certification program. At Holy Cross, he has been very active in student organizations and committees. After four years of participation in Students for Life, he is currently the group's co-chair. A lector and liturgical coordinator, Otto has spent each year at Holy Cross teaching C.C.D.

He spent last year as co-chair of the Parish Retreat Team, leading high school retreats throughout Worcester County churches, a team with which he has been involved all four years. After an overwhelmingly positive experience in the First Year Program, Otto spent his sophomore year as a mentor to new members of the program. He was also a Resident Assistant for two years.

Otto's interest in education and teaching started in elementary school. "I always thought that there was no occupation that could make me happier than teaching. Holy Cross has given me volunteer and other opportunities to test this idea. My student teaching now confirms it. And Holy Cross has also helped me to see teaching as a very real way to live out one’s Catholic faith."

Otto’s proposal to the Watson Foundation aimed to integrate his experience of education and teacher training, his study of history and his love for his faith in a project to study Catholic education in post-colonial India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Having recognized that the Catholic Church has many schools counted among the best in those countries but which educate a majority of non-Catholic students, Otto has formulated the following overarching research question:

What are the particular goals of Catholic education in the third-world, where most students are non-Catholic and will work in secular environments?

He plans to visit schools for extended periods of observation and conversation with students, their families and faculty to try to determine the schools’ roles both as educational institutions and as representatives of Catholicism. Members of the Holy Cross Jesuit community have been particularly helpful in identifying sites in the region where Otto’s project could be effectively pursued. This project is personally significant to Otto, since his mother was raised in colonial India and educated in a Catholic school there.

Holy Cross is among 50 selective liberal arts colleges and universities invited to nominate up to four students each year for this prestigious award. More than 1,000 students applied this year. The winners for 2001 range from physicists to studio artists with such individual interests as roller coaster design, classification of tropical frogs, and the international art market. They will be awarded $22,000 to support a year of travel and to pursue in-depth independent study. The goal of the Watson program is to open up the Fellows to the wider world and foster an appreciation for cultural differences and a more informed sense of international concern.