Six students will travel across the globe to places like Calcutta, Katmandu and Ethiopia to do community service as Tucker Fellows this fall.
Daniel Dalseth '97, Kari McCadam '97, Jeneil Palmer '97, Clare Pinkert '97, Sara Snyder '98 and Jennifer Whetsell '97 were named the fall Tucker Fellows last week, said Deanna Gordon, an administrative assistant for the Tucker Foundation.
The Tucker Fellowship Program, sponsored by the Tucker Foundation, provides information and a $1700 stipend that allows students to join up with an agency that sends people throughout the world to serve the welfare of others.
Dalseth will travel to the Katmandu Valley in Nepal to work for Educate the Children, he said.
As part of this program, he will teach English and possibly science and math at a boarding school in Katmandu, Dalseth said.
Gordon said Dalseth will also serve as a "big brother" to impoverished children at the school, organize field trips and assist in an adult literacy program.
He said he chose this project after hearing about it from a friend.
"I knew someone who went on Educate the Children and I knew I wanted to go to a third world country," Dalseth said. "This program seemed like the best one."
"It's not often that you have an opportunity to go to a place like Nepal where things are so much different from America," he said.
Pinkert, who could not be reached for comment, will also work for Educate the Children in Katmandu teaching English and serving as a "big sister to the children at the school," Gordon said.
While Dalseth and Pinkert are in Nepal, McCadam will not be far away working for Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India.
She said she will work as a general nurse's aid and will change bed sheets, bathe patients and try to make them as comfortable as possible when they die.
While excited to have this opportunity, McCadam said the cultural differences will be "shocking" at first.
"It's a fundamentally different way of thinking about life and death," she said. "It will lead me to question what I think of life and death and religion."
Palmer will also participate in a missionaries of Charity program, but she will be in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
She said she will help the nuns there care for the mentally retarded, handicapped and emotionally disturbed women at a compound that houses people who are homeless and too sick to get to the hospital.
Looking for an opportunity to feel she has a purpose, Palmer said she is looking forward to this experience.
"I want to be able to do something that isn't for myself," she said. "Here, I always do things for myself. This will let me better focus on what is really important in life."
Snyder, who is off this term, will work for Doctors to the World in Vera Cruz, Mexico, Gordon said.
In Vera Cruz, Snyder will work with medical personnel to provide health care and hygiene education.
Snyder will also help gather information on programs for improving the health of rural people in Mexico, Gordon said.
Unlike Snyder, Whetsell will remain closer to home and work for Bridge for Kids in San Francisco, Calif.
The program helps families in which one or more members are afflicted with HIV or AIDS, she said.
