Follow Clint's Watson Adventures

Clint Agresti (IPE '09) has just begun his year as a Thomas Watson Fellow, traveling the world to explore folk music -- a true global/local project.

You can follow Clint's project by reading his blog, "Folk Sounds from All Around."

Here is complete information about Clint's project and the Watson Fellowship program.

University of Puget Sound graduate Clinton Agresti ’09 has been awarded the prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to pursue an independent project overseas during 2010–11. Agresti was one of 40 college seniors from 23 states and three foreign countries to receive the grant, in a contest that the Thomas J. Watson Foundation described as especially competitive this year.

Agresti, an international political economy major and 2005 graduate of Walla Walla High School, will receive $25,000 for 12 months of travel and independent research. The student from Rockaway Beach, Ore., plans to visit Mongolia, Ukraine, Ghana, and Bolivia, while documenting a series of music ethnographies. These will consist of photographs, music recordings, and written material documenting musicians and musical groups who participate in oral traditions—defined by Agresti as those “passed down orally and learned by ear.”

“Clinton is an outstanding student who commits himself enthusiastically to all he takes on,” said Sharon Chambers-Gordon, director of the Fellowships Office at Puget Sound. “There were 150 finalists competing on a national level and we are proud, though not surprised, to see him among the selected recipients.”

Agresti’s project, titled “Beneath the Sounds: Exploring and Preserving the Music of Community,” will aim to create a better understanding of the relationship between music and culture by exploring the subjective worlds of individual musicians against the backdrop of their communities and traditions.

“It is essentially about understanding the unique human drive to invent music—music that draws from and contributes to the values, worldviews, and ways of subsistence of the community,” Agresti said.

The Watson fellow will frame his research with questions that may reveal more about the creative process of musicians in foreign cultures. He will also seek to discover common strands of inspiration among the far-flung musicians. Agresti plays several instruments, including piano, percussion, and guitar, and intends to actively participate in his host communities’ music.

Agresti will spend time with the Zakhchin people of the Khovd region in Mongolia, the Hutuls of the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine, the Asante of central Ghana, and the Aymara of the Lake Titicaca basin in Bolivia, all of whom practice largely agrarian or pastoral lifestyles. With the persistent advance of modernization, these ways of life, and the musical traditions they spawned, are fading—a reality that underscores the importance of the project.

“This Watson project began when Clinton picked up a saxophone at the age of eight,” said David Tinsley, Agresti’s faculty mentor and a Puget Sound professor of foreign languages and literature. “It certainly will not end when he records Zakhchin long songs in Mongolia or jams with the Aymara in Bolivia. What he hears will become a part of what he plays and shares with fellow musicians for the rest of his life.”

Chambers-Gordon and Tinsley, who chairs the Graduate Fellowships Advisory Committee, assisted Agresti in submitting his application, which he wrote while studying abroad in New Zealand. Other members of the committee are Alyce DeMarais, Kate Stirling, Patrick O’Neil, Katherine Smith, and Jeff Grinstead. The committee reads about 16 applications, interviews eight students, and nominates three or four, who go to the next level of the competitive process and are interviewed by a Watson Fellowship representative.

The Watson Fellowship is awarded to graduating seniors who are nominated by participating colleges and universities. The Thomas J. Watson Foundation looks for people likely to lead or innovate and allows them a great deal of independence in pursuing their interests.

University of Puget Sound has had 21 Watson Fellows since it began its affiliation with the foundation in 1993. The Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Program was established by the children of Thomas J. Watson Sr., the founder of IBM, and his wife, Jeannette Watson, to honor their parents' longstanding interest in education and world affairs. Fellows have gone on to become college presidents, chief executives, MacArthur “genius” grant recipients, politicians, artists, diplomats, journalists, and researchers across a wide range of sciences and engineering disciplines.

Watson Fellowship Awarded to Clint Agresti IPE '09

The Thomas Watson Foundation has just announced that Clint Agresti (IPE '09) has been awarded one of its prestigious fellowships! Congratulations, Clint!

Watson Fellows receive a grant of $25,000 to fund a year a travel and research outside the United States on a project of their own design. Here is the description of Clint's project taken from the Watson website.

Clint Agresti, University of Puget Sound
Beneath the Sounds: Exploring and Preserving the Music of Community
Mongolia, Ukraine, Ghana, Bolivia
Each traditional musical culture flows from a way of life, deeply rooted in geographical and cultural context. But as globalization advances, the world’s diverse musical traditions are changing and fading, as are the unique worlds that inspire them. I will visit four countries to explore and document a selection of vibrant yet little known musical cultures that carry on in the face of modernization. I will delve into each community by playing its music, and I will strive to promote the preservation of these traditions by publishing or archiving my results.

Olympic Games: Think Snow. Think IPE!

Are you managing to catch some of the events of the Winter Olympic games in Vancouver? If you are, remember to Think IPE! IPE legend Susan Strange identified international sports (and the international NGOs that govern them) as one of the cutting edges of contemporary IPE.

It is easy to see why. The events are not simply sport (whatever that might mean). IPE is ultimately the study of values. The "universal values" that the games are supposed to represent come into conflict with national interests, commercial interests and also quite obviously the interests and ambitions of the individuals involved. The games would make a great topic for an IPE senior thesis.

Or at least that's what Greg Groggel (IPE 2006) thought. He wrote his senior thesis about the IPE of global sports and received a Watson Fellowship to study the lasting effect of the Olympic games on host cities. Here's a video that was recorded in Beijing, the last stop on his year-long quest, "Chasing the Flame." Greg now works for NBC Sports covering the Olympics behind the scenes. His work on the Beijing games earned an Emmy.

It just goes to show where an IPE degree can take you!

Note: The photo shows Holden Sapp (IPE '10) representing Puget Sound recently at the intercollegiate regional ski championships. Think Snow. Think IPE.

Greg Groggel '06 and the Vancouver Olympics

Greg Groggel (IPE '06) is making a career out of covering the Olympic Games. Greg worked as a photographer at the Turin and Athens Olympics while still a student and traveled the world studying the lasting effects of the Olympic Games for the host cities as a Watson Fellow. Since returning from his Watson year he has worked for Major League Soccer and then with NBC at the Beijing games.

Now he is gearing up for the Vancouver games, which start in 100 days. Greg writes that ...

Here's a rather informal preview I wrote for the various NBC platforms: http://www.nbcolympics.com/news-features/news/newsid=366627.html This time I'm working on the editorial, television side of things -- currently in Montreal to do short track speed skating research.

Stay tuned for more news feeds from Greg this winter, including a planned article in Arches magazine.

Beijing 2008 Report

Greg Groggel (IPE '06 and former Watson Fellow) is back from covering the Beijing Olympics for NBC. We asked Greg to reflect on his experiences there. Here is his report. Watch this space for an announcement of a talk that Greg will give on campus later this month.

For nearly three and a half weeks in August, Beijing welcomed the world, but only partly, and through the lens of tightly scripted television. Impromptu Olympic Games these were not. They seemed to lack the internationally roisterous flair that I so enjoyed in Athens. And while the general news media routinely used the occasion to proclaim China's "arrival" and the Olympics their "coming out party," I'll spare you the general boilerplate as even the dead horse has cried uncle.

When I visited Beijing a year ago as part of my Watson Fellowship project, I predicted that China would implode. I thought that there was no way they would be able to cover all their bases by the time the wily foreign press rolled into town. The international airport was a joke, public transportation was near non-existent, one couldn't find English language assistance and there was an army of migrant laborers that would surely be an issue. It didn't look good, and I wanted to be there to see it burn.

This past spring, however, Beijing started to tie together the city's loose ends. Construction wrapped on the stadiums, subway lines and massive airport terminal. Similarly, visas were not renewed for many of the foreign businessmen, freelancers, students and artists (or, as fellow logger Nicole Shanahan told me, all the "cool people"). I should have known that China's leaders and general public were going to let nothing get in the way of the long-awaited spectacle.

Looking back, a telling sign came when I was visiting the Three Gorges Damn. While waiting for a bus I was chatting with a young Chinese lady about the one-year countdown. In perfect English, she told me that she applied to be an Olympic volunteer, but was rejected. Admittedly crushed, she now was focused on another task, getting in to University of Wisconsin to study Marketing. And this is someone they turned down.

But China's Olympic honchos made a crucial mistake in thinking the rest of the world held the Beijing Games with the same reverence. When the riots in Tibet happened, the glaring spotlight that comes with hosting the spectacle illuminated not just China's brute force there, but in other spheres as well. And suddenly, frustrations over China's role in the world manifested into a single object, the Olympic flame. Those with concerns over the growing power then found that the flame was passing through their very city. It was all too perfect, really.

Back to the Games themselves, as I know that's what Professor Veseth wanted to hear about in the first place. In my opinion, the 2008 Olympics proved to be intended much more for China than for the rest of the world. In other words, it was a domestic demonstration that while surely meant to impress foreigners, was designed to change how the Chinese thought about themselves. I knew this could play a large role in their Olympic experience after what I learned from my two months in Seoul, South Korea.

While reading in a park, I started talking with an elderly man about the 1988 Games. Their meaning, he explained, was that they proved to the world that they belonged. But even more important was that it proved to the people that they belonged to the world. At the Olympic Green and throughout Beijing, the scene was one of proud Chinese families. People that had traveled for days to witness the visual power of the Bird's Nest in person and soak in the aura of accomplishment. Michael Phelps? Phelps who? I've never seen such an apathetic response to such an historic performance. Yes, the top story in Beijing was of the sheer dominance of Chinese athletes. If Liu Xiang had done much to alter the perception of China as the "Sick man of Asia" with his win in the 110m hurdles in Athens, then the 51 gold medals obliterated that fallacy in Beijing.

Unrelated, I think the foreign press generally let the rest of us down, lobbing up softballs when there was much to be covered (I know, I threw out some particular juicy ones). The journalists seemed less likely to venture out into the masses than they had in Athens or Torino. In particular, the fate of the migrant workers is one that pains me to see go undocumented. Tough to be fair the general Chinese population wasn't eager to air grievances they saw as a sacrifice for the whole (or could get them in trouble with the ever-watching eye). But perhaps more important, I believe foreign diplomats and heads of state proved their cowardice by hiding behind the "Olympics is about sport" excuse.

President Bush, decked in cargo shorts and a visor, looking ever the fraternity chum playing beach volleyball with Misty and Kerri, did little to advance the political concerns of the world over. And yet we criticize IOC President Jacques Rogge for not bringing full-scale change? Please.

I think in the end the 2008 Olympic Games will have a rather remarkable legacy. In what form exactly, it's too early to tell. While it's true the Olympics didn't bring the type of massive social and political change many had hoped, I think you'll ultimately find it in smaller ways. Things like copyright protection, cultural and artistic respect, and even things like the introduction of seeing-eye dogs to the world's largest nation. Still, much work has yet to be done, particularly in the post-Olympic utility of their many venues, to ensure a positive legacy. But something tells me not to bet against them.

Greg Groggel Reports from Beijing 2008 Olympics

What can you do with an IPE major? Well, if you are Greg Groggel (IPE 2006), you go to Beijing and report on the 2008 Olympics for NBC! Click on this link to read Greg's continuing Olympic Reports.

Greg studied the IPE 0f sports for his senior thesis (Global Recess: Sporting Alternatives to Idle Development) then traveled the world on his Watson Fellowship project, Chasing the Flame, which examined the political, economic and social impact of the Olympics on host countries. Greg worked for a U.S. soccer organization in New York until NBC called him to join its Olympic reporting team.

Congratulations, Greg. You are really living the dream!