Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 414/832-6590
For Immediate Release					  March 25, 1997

$18,000 Fellowships Send Two Lawrence University Seniors to Hudson Bay, China  
 

	APPLETON, WIS. ั  You would have a hard time convincing New
London's Matt Magolan that the Thomas J. Watson Foundation is really anything 
but a front for a making-dreams-come-true operation.

	"I liken the Watson Foundation to the Make-A-Wish Foundation,"
said the Lawrence University senior biology major.

	Magolan and fellow senior Scott Leier were among 60 students
nationally awarded $18,000 fellowships by the Providence, R.I.-based Watson 
Foundation for a "wanderjahr" of travel and exploration outside the U.S. on a 
topic of their choice.	

	Magolan and Leier were the only students from Wisconsin or a Wisconsin
college selected for the fellowships.  More than 1,000 seniors from 50 colleges
applied for the fellowship.  Their selection also keeps intact Lawrence's
impressive streak of having at least one Watson fellowship recipient every year
except one since the program's inception in 1968.  

	A self-described romantic and dreamer, Magolan has been fixated
with the solitude of the north since childhood.  He spent many nights at the 
family cottage in northern Wisconsin studying maps, looking for the most 
secluded places on Earth ั Baffin Island, Ellesmere Island, even the North 
Pole. 

	"Fifteen years have passed since I was an eight-year-old and I've
learned a great deal since then," says Magolan. "One thing I haven't learned, 
however, is how to repress that childhood desire to go north ั to the Arctic." 

     	Next May, Magolan's dream will finally become reality when he climbs
into his custom-made kayak, stocked with no more than 150 pounds of supplies and
equipment ั including bear bombs, a 12-gauge shotgun and an emergency global
satellite telephone ั and paddles into the chilly waters of James Bay outside
Moosonee, Ontario.  It will be the beginning of a three-month, 1,000-mile solo
trip up the eastern shore of Hudson Bay.  Along the way he will camp and visit
Inuit communities scattered along the Quebec shoreline where he hopes to learn
the techniques used in constructing traditional Inuit hunting and fishing
implements.

	"I want to come into their communities in their ways, using their
traditional forms of transportation," said Magolan of his arrival by kayak. "I
think that will be important to be accepted into their communities."   	

	Magolan has received planning help and travel advice from
Manitoba's Don Starkell, the only man known to have kayaked the Northwest 
Passage.  And while Starkell has worked the west side of Hudson Bay, Magolan 
said he is not aware of anyone who has kayaked the length of the east side of 
the bay. "I suppose it could have been done at some point by an Inuit," he 
said.  

	After spending most of next summer kayaking, Magolan hopes to
spend the winter in one of the Inuit towns of Inukjuak, Povungnituk or 
Akulivik, learning the traditional ways of their lives and livelihoods.

	"I want to live with a community that wants to share with an outsider,"
said Magolan.  "This project has been calling me throughout my life.  I was 
worried it would be perceived as too dangerous.  But the Watson Foundation has 
a track record of rewarding dreams and this is my dream."

	While Magolan heads to largely isolated areas, Leier returns to the 
world's most populous country, which he first visited in 1995 as a student in
the Associated China Program.  It was under a bridge in the city of Tianjin
where the street vendors ั getihu ั operated, selling items ranging from
bootleg compact discs to popsicles out of coolers on the back of bicycles, 
that Leier found himself staring into the face of China's massive economic and
cultural upheaval.

	"Getihu is the newly devised Chinese term for the many individual
entrepreneurs lining the streets of China's cities," explained Leier, an
economics and East Asian Languages and Cultures major from St. Paul, Minn.
"They came into existence at the beginning of the 1980s as a result of the
reforms instituted by Deng Xiaoping.  After visiting the vendors under the
bridge, I realized what was happening.  In a country where, up until the last
few years, commerce was conducted entirely by state-run businesses, these
individuals were setting up shop and choosing to sell a typical American
product."    	

	In addition to studying the getihu, Leier will examine the emergence of
Special Economic Zones lining China's coast, visiting with businessmen
operating in the zones, as well as exploring the slower economic changes 
occurring in China's vast interior.

	"Economic development is not occurring at an equal rate throughout
China," said Leier, whose interest in the country started with seventh-grade 
language lessons and grew exponentially as a Lawrence sophomore when he had a 
Chinese roommate. "While the large coastal cities and the SEZs are rapidly 
developing, the hinterland of China continues to be the home of 70 percent of 
China's population.  These traditional people in farming communities are being
left behind economically."  	

	Leier fears for the future of China's rich cultural heritage as
the effects of economic development ripple through society. 

	"When I was in China the first time, I saw people who had very little
outside of the basic necessities of life, yet they were content with that," he
said.  "I pitied them for their lack of ิthe finer things in life,' yet envied
them for their happiness, their relatively relaxed lifestyle and most of all
their culture.  

	"But as privatization increases and more foreign products and ideas come
in, I don't see how they can retain the culture they have now.  If the loss of
culture is the result, will the Chinese people still regard their improved
standard of living as an economic miracle?" 

     	For Leier, the opportunity to spend a year in China is as much about
personal growth as it is about learning more about the country and its people.

	"The closest I've come to self-reliance before this was leaving St. Paul
to come to Lawrence," said Leier.  "I have some apprehension about being over
there on my own, but it also makes me smile just thinking about the challenge.
I'm looking forward to how this will change me as a person.  The last nine
years of my life, especially the last few, have been leading me straight to 
China.  I feel I must return.  The Watson Fellowship will allow me to realize 
my dream."