Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship
The Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship is a competitive academic grant made each year to fifteen undergraduates nominated by 12 affiliated New York City colleges which provides successive summer internships for three years, stipends, mentoring, and seminars. The fellowship is a program of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, named after the wife of IBM founder Thomas J. Watson. Jeanette K. Watson Fellows intern at not-for-profit organizations, governmental agencies, and for-profit organization in New York in their first two Watson summers. In their third summer, they typically intern in overseas offices of such organizations as the Institute of International Education, Save the Children, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, as well as community-based organizations in such countries as India, South Africa, and Ghana.
The Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship is associated with eight divisions of the City University of New York -- Baruch College, Lehman College, Hunter College, the City College of New York, John Jay College, Queens College, Brooklyn College, and the College of Staten Island. It is also affiliated with four independent colleges -- St. John's University; Marymount Manhattan College; Pace University Manhattan; and Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus. The Fellowship was established by the Thomas J. Watson Foundation in 1999. Its founding Director, the late Alice Stone Ilchman, former President of Sarah Lawrence College and Elizabeth Buckner, former Board of Advisors member, developed the original idea for the Fellowship and began working with eight colleges. Frank Wolf, its second director, served from 2006 until his retirement in 2012. Dean Emeritus of the School of Continuing Education at Columbia University, Wolf extended participation to four additional New York City colleges and expanded substantially the Fellowship's internships in the for-profit sector. In 2012 the Foundation combined the directorships of its two programs with the appointment of Chris Kasabach as the Executive Director of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation.