L&S students reap national honors

Jonathan Welch, a UW–Madison senior, was interning at the Institute for Health and Social Justice last summer when he was confronted with the daunting task of saving a poverty-stricken village in Haiti from crisis. The village was in desperate need of zidovudine (AZT), a drug that can help extend the lives of AIDS patients and prevent pregnant women from transmitting HIV to their babies, but Haiti’s Clinique Bon Sauveur could not afford it.

So Welch contacted an official at the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, who told him the village did not qualify for a plan that discounted the drug to poor countries. Welch wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. Instead, he and his colleagues convinced the drug manufacturer, Glaxo Wellcome, to offer it to Clinique Bon Sauveur at a significant discount.

“This success was immensely gratifying,” says Welch, “proving to me that deep concern can overcome administrative barriers – in this case, allowing good treatment to reach sick people in the most unlikely of settings, an impoverished village in rural Haiti.”

For this and numerous other accomplishments, the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation selected Welch as a winner of a $30,000 scholarship to use toward graduate study. He is one of 79 college students from across the country to receive the award, which is given to those who have outstanding leadership potential, plan to pursue careers in government or elsewhere in public service, and who wish to attend graduate school.

“Jon Welch has an amazing talent for getting to the roots of health problems and understanding their origins and impact in social and cultural terms,” says University Health Services Director Richard Keeling, who has worked with Welch on the Robert Wood Johnson project. “His ability to think both systematically and politically gives him unusual strength in analyzing complex health problems.”

Welch plans to pursue a medical degree and a doctorate in medical anthropology after he graduates from UW–Madison next year with a degree in health and society, a major he designed himself. He says he wants to continue advocating for the needy by starting a non-governmental health organization that supports poor areas throughout the world.

This spring has been exceptional in terms of the number of prestigious national awards reaped by undergraduates in the College of Letters and Science. Other award recipients include:

• Andrew Coan, a junior from Neenah, is one of only 20 students nationwide to receive a Beinecke Brothers Memorial Scholarship, which provides $32,000 toward two years of graduate study. Coan is majoring in English and philosophy.
• Sarah E. Klimenko, a senior in history and political science, is one of 98 recipients nationwide of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships in Humanistic Studies, the only national humanities graduate award. The one-year fellowship will pay her graduate school tuition and fees, and includes a $14,500 stipend.
• Two UW–Madison students have been named Barry M. Goldwater scholars: Pallavi P. Gopal, a senior in molecular biology from Brookfield, and Anders C. Olson, a senior in zoology from Sun Prairie. The scholarship covers expenses for tuition, fees, books, and room and board, up to a maximum of $7,500 annually. Students receive the funding each year for the remainder of college. Both plan to graduate in May 2000.