Like many other students, Sarah Rose Graber has already started planning her summer. But unlike many of her peers, her itinerary includes visits to Africa, Australia and South America.
Graber will travel to these locations to study the relationship between theater and communication, a research project she developed in order to be considered for the Circumnavigator Club’s Around-the-World Travel-Study Grant.
The Circumnavigator Club Foundation, a worldwide organization founded by global travelers more than 100 years ago, will give Graber and three other students in the United States $7,000 grants to investigate a research topic of their choosing through firsthand experience in countries around the world.
“To travel around the globe and to be able to have 10 weeks to study in places that I’ve only dreamed of going to is really quite remarkable,” said Graber, a Communication junior, who applied for the grant in early December.
With 1,000 international members and 11 chapters throughout the world, the Circumnavigator Club awards these grants to students who create an interesting and comprehensible research project that will allow them to travel to at least six different countries on at least three different continents.
Graber’s project will investigate the use of theater to convey important social concerns such as health care, gender issues, moral human rights and economic standing.
“These are things that need to be heard that are put into performance,” Graber said. “By creating a performance that can communicate these important issues, it allows the people in the communities to understand on a much larger scale how to maintain things like health care.”
Students who qualify for the program must be juniors in college and must complete an extensive application. The process requires them to select and outline a detailed topic of research as well as decide on their own global itinerary.
Projects also must permit students to immerse themselves in different cultures, prompting them to learn about the local ways of life.
“This is a super opportunity,” said Father James Arimond, the president of the Chicago chapter of the Circumnavigator Club, who helped select Graber. “We’re very impressed with Sarah. She has a tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm, and we think she’ll do great.”
Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education Stephen Fisher chose Northwestern’s candidates along with other faculty members through a preliminary screening. This year they reviewed 15 applications and sent the three most competitive ones to officials at the Chicago chapter, who then conducted in-person interviews.
“The club asks for our assistance in advertising for them,” Fisher said. “We then receive applications and decide which ones to send to the club. Our criteria include the importance of the project, its feasibility and the student’s readiness to undertake a project of this kind.”
The Chicago chapter offers this opportunity only to students and currently only every other year. Graber, the chapter’s first female recipient of the grant, will have to submit a lengthy research report after her trip and will also present her report upon returning to Chicago.
“I’m extremely excited to have this opportunity, and I hope to learn a great deal about the role of theater in society and its ability to create change,” Graber said. “(With this grant) I hope to make the world a little bit better than the way I found it.”
