Enrichment Opportunities
As a Caldwell Fellow, you will participate in experiences that might be outside your usual comfort zone. These challenges are not limited to just taking risks - they help expand your self-awareness as you begin to understand your potential for personal growth.
Whether it is study abroad or the Fellows Wilderness Experience, service opportunities, a career internship, special course offerings, retreats or other activities, Fellows find their passions — and a place for them. Students also receive a renewable academic award valued at $4,000 for their sophomore, junior and senior years and have access to additional funding to support participation in enrichment opportunities like the ones below.
Study-abroad provides scholars an excellent opportunity for students to challenge themselves with the unfamiliar. Scholars can participate in summer, semester or year-long programs in almost any location on the globe. Many Caldwell Fellows chose the summer study-abroad Program at Oxford University.
Service-learning is a collaborative teaching and learning strategy that promotes academic enhancement, civic engagement and personal growth. Students participate in meaningful community service that they can relate to academic material, including Leadership and Ethics Seminars, alternative spring break trips and self-designed experiences. In locations such as Honduras, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, students immerse themselves in another culture as they serve others. They reflect upon their own civic roles and responsibilities as members of a global community and their privilege as members of American society.
The Caldwell Programs provide support for career-related experiences such as internships, academic research and other relevant experiences. Students gain significant professional experience, valuable contacts (often with Caldwell alumni) and a chance to discover the possibilities and challenges that await them in their respective fields.
Past Fellows have worked at non-profit organizations like Trees Across America in Kansas and medical facilities in Ecuador; in the government sector at the Centers for Disease Control in Altanta and the Environmental Defense Office in Washington, D.C.; in industry at Proctor and Gamble in Greensboro; and entertainment at The David Letterman Show in New York City.
Each May, scholars learn first-hand about leadership, team building and personal strengths during the Wilderness Experience. Led by Jerry Barker, director of NC State Student Health Services, scholars leave their comfort zone for an intense week of growth as they rock climb, hike, camp and live in the backcountry of California, Colorado, Washington and the Florida Everglades.
The Caldwell Programs encourages scholars to develop self-designed projects such as international service-learning experiences or unusual travel or research experiences. This type of enrichment is undertaken as a capstone experience, integrating course work with personal and/or professional post-graduate objectives.
In recent years, scholars designed projects that took them to the Philippines to support the assessment of HIV/AIDS education, to St. Croix to investigate aggressive behaviors in fish, to Siberia to support educators in the development of curricula related to sustainable development, and to Israel to participate in an archaeological dig.
Scholars who intend to compete for national and international graduate fellowships (such as the Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, and Goldwater) can apply for funding for self-designed intensive projects. The Caldwell Programs may provide supplemental funding to support such projects when students optimize program opportunities and demonstrate significant stewardship. Visit the University Honors Web site for more information.