Bates College names additional Phillips Student Fellow

Cynthia Freeman, a sophomore from Cameron, Ariz., has been named the seventh recipient of a 2004 Phillips Fellowship at Bates College.

The Phillips Student Fellowship at Bates provides major funding for summer research projects involving meaningful immersion in different cultures. Six 2004 recipients were named previously.

Freeman will use her fellowship to explore the intersections among African Americans and indigenous people in the Seminole community of Texas and Mexico, looking particularly at the experiences of women. She is interested in how the many “Black Indians” among the Seminole are perceived by both indigenous and African American communities, how the two cultures merge and how families are structured.  Phillips Student Fellowships support students who design exceptional international or cross-cultural projects focusing on research, service-learning, career exploration or a combination of the three. The best Phillips Fellowships are challenging and transformative experiences for the students who undertake them.

The Phillips Student Fellowships, Phillips Faculty Fellowships and Phillips Professorships at Bates are part of the Phillips Endowment Program, an initiative of awards, honors and opportunities funded by a $9 million endowment bequest made to the college in 1999 by Charles F. Phillips, fourth president of Bates, and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips.