Wise Wanderer Scholarship

“The great men of antiquity considered that there was no better school for life than travel: in this school one learns endlessly about so many other lives; again and again one reads a new lesson in this great book of the world. Besides, the change of air benefits body and mind.” – Louis de Jaucourt, “Voyage,” Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonneé des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol 17. Paris 1765.

In a lecture, Marshall Gorges provided first year LAHers with the following advice: “Give yourself time to get off the rail; Don’t rush; Be willing to explore; Break from the script.” As he described his own travels across the globe, he observed “Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing.”

In the spirit of adventure and education, the Wise Wanderer Scholarship will award one student $5,000 for the summer of 2015 to travel, exploring personal or academic interests.

Eligibility: Current Liberal Arts Honors students who will not be graduating in May 2015.

Application: Submit your 500 – 750 word travel proposal outlining a well thought out description of your journey and its goals. Attach a detailed itinerary and a budget. Make sure the budget allow for travel to and within the country (or countries!), accommodations, food, and entrance fees for attractions. Wise wandering travel must be completed by August 2015, so only apply for a journey you intend to take.

Requirements: The successful application must meet a few expectations:

1 – Travel must be outside of the United States.

2 – Your journey should cover a significant amount of time – at least three weeks – with an itinerary you can reasonably complete over the course of a summer.

3 – The budget should include costs only for yourself. Scholarship money cannot be used to cover airfare, accommodations, or food for any travel companions.

Applications are due in the LAH office by Friday, January 30, 2015.

The Pinto Carver Essay Contest – 2015

The Topic:

We encourage liberal arts students to learn all that they can about the world and about themselves. We do so out of the belief that, in the words of Roger Shattuck, “the free cultivation and circulation of ideas, opinions, and goods through all society (education, scholarship, scientific research, commerce, the arts, and the media) will in the long run promote our welfare” (Forbidden Knowledge, 5-6). Both classical and Judeo-Christian thought supports this belief, Socrates telling us in The Protagoras that “All things are knowledge, including justice, and temperance, and courage—which tends to show that virtue can certainly be taught.” On the U.T. Tower you find inscribed Jesus’s powerful injunction: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). We smile and feel dismissive of the Victorian matron who when told of Darwin’s findings exclaimed: “’Descended from the apes! My dear, let us hope that it is not true, but that if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known” (Shattuck, 2). We are encouraged to know; we want to know.

Yet a counter current flows through our traditions. Socrates is exemplary because he knows what he does not know. In the Garden of Eden grows the tree of knowledge with its forbidden fruit. Folklore tells us “To let sleeping dogs lie” and that “Curiosity killed the cat.” As he watches the young scholars at Eton College play, Thomas Gray captures, ambivalently and poignantly, our sense that there may be limitations on what we should know:

 

Yet ah! why should they know their fate ?

Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies.

Thought would destroy their paradise.

No more; where ignorance is bliss,

’Tis folly to be wise.

(“Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College”)

 

Write an essay in which you agree or disagree that there are limits to what human beings should know. Needless to say, the more well developed your thoughts, the more specific your language, the better.

 

Eligibility: Current Liberal Arts Honors Freshmen and Sophomores.

Specifications: 750-1000 words, titled, double-spaced, and typed, with your name in the upper-right hand corner. No cover page.

Awards:

1^st Prize: $1500

2^nd Prize: $500

3^rd Prize: $250

Submission Deadline: Friday, January 23, 5:00 p.m. in the Liberal Arts Honors Office. The judges reserve the right to withhold awards in the absence of prize worthy essays. And in closing: “Style, in its finest sense,” Alfred North Whitehead reminds us, “is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being. The administrator with a sense for style hates waste; the engineer with a sense for style economizes his material; the artisan with a sense for style prefers good work. Style is the ultimate morality of mind.”