Dancing on the Seine – Winning the Luther Rice Fellowship

The following blog post was written by Linda Ryan, a CCAS junior studying dance and exercise science.
The year was 2015. It was eleven-thirty PM. I was in my room, holding a can of Pringles in one hand and scrolling through my Luther Rice Research Proposal on my laptop with the other. My faculty mentor had sent her recommendation a few days earlier, I was finished proofreading, and it was time to click “Send.”

Jump ahead a few months to April – the third floor of Gelman. Finals were nigh. I was writing a paper in my pajamas. And I had just received an email saying that GW was giving me a grant to do research in England and France that summer.
Fast forward a couple times more and you’d see me choreographing in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum; taking notes on the doorknobs in King Louis XIV’s bedroom; dancing outside of Tube stations, on the banks of the Seine, and all over the Chateau of Versailles; and now preparing to present that choreography in GW’s MainStage Season later this month.
It’s a weird story – but it happened to me. And (something like) it can happen to you too, if you apply for a Luther Rice Research Fellowship. The Rice Fellowship offers a unique opportunity to execute a funded, high-level, independent research project during your undergraduate career. You decide what to study, where to go, how to do it, and what the product will be. GW provides the means to make it happen.
My Rice Fellowship sent me on a solo trip to Europe – where will yours send you?