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Summer grant launches first-year Monroe Scholar research
For Sadie Wallander, a sophomore James Monroe Scholar from Arlington, Virginia, a summer research project offered a chance to explore Cold War diplomacy and reflect on her role as a global citizen today.
She says the Monroe Scholars program’s guaranteed research funding was key to her choosing William & Mary. “That was such a cool experience that you wouldn’t get at a larger school, or a school that didn’t have as many scholar programs,” she said.
Wallander, a prospective government and English double major, spent three weeks last June studying Cold War educational exchange programs between the Soviet Union and the United States as an effective measure of citizen diplomacy.
She was drawn to the subject after taking a course with Professor of Government Marcus Holmes, who later served as her faculty mentor. Holmes specializes in face-to-face diplomacy, which Wallander extended in her examination of these Cold War-era programs.
“Educational exchange programs demonstrated that citizen diplomacy could be effective, especially within institutions like universities which are so often at the forefront of social and political change,” she said. “And because I was studying universities, I saw the future implications of it as a way to kickstart social change in this day and age.”
In her research, she found that educational exchange programs were far more beneficial for the United States than the Soviet Union.
“Soviet students who came to the United States for these exchanges were definitely much more impacted by American ideology, and not even ideology but sometimes just American culture and the openness to multiculturalism,” said Wallander. “Whereas American students who went to the Soviet Union came back not disillusioned very much, having an increased sense of American nationalism.”
She says these results demonstrate the importance of expanding our global perspectives.
“It's not always that you feel changed by what you've seen or that it impacts your worldview. It can cement your worldview but that doesn't mean that it's any less crucial to understand more of the world around you, especially as the U.S. becomes increasingly embroiled in international tensions and conflict,” she said.
Wallander connected these students’ experiences to her own.
“On a college campus — especially as a freshman — there’s that sort of shock of living by yourself for the first time, and I could see that mirror a hundredfold for people who were coming from an entirely different culture, and country.”
Summer research, Wallander says, solidified her appreciation for the information available to her.
“I think there’s always more to know, and it never hurts to have a new understanding of information that was previously there. I think that’s why people study history, and that’s why people study prior governments — because the more that you understand about what happened before you, the more you can understand what’s going to happen while you’re here, and what might happen after you’re gone.”
She says the $1,500 research stipend provided the freedom and funding to afford source materials and pursue her research uninhibited.
“Knowledge has intrinsic value,” she said. “Being able to learn what you want when you want — that has value.”
Wallander says her Monroe peers, and the breadth of their interests, inspired her to “learn as much as possible.”
“I think it’s such a valuable experience to have this wealth of knowledge — the way that the Soviet students realized upon coming here,” she said. “Being on a college campus is one of the biggest privileges I think anyone could ever have.”
Interested in learning more about summer research grants for first-year Monroe Scholars? Click here.
