Emily Balog ’24 at the signpost on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.
For helping to provide adventures on an off-campus program, there’s something special about the Kevin Williams ’10 Endowed Memorial Fellowship Award and its recipients.
As written by Emily Balog ’24:
It is with incredible gratitude that I reflect on my travels this past semester. I participated in ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ’s fall 2022 study group to Cape Town, South Africa, studying biogeography under Professor Mike Loranty and representation of African cultures and communities under Professor Tammy Wilks. Having never before visited Africa, these courses opened my eyes to a myriad of different perspectives and approaches to this new environment around me, and I was lucky enough to be able to travel around Africa during some of my free time.
With the generosity of the Williams family to commemorate their late son, Kevin Williams ’10, via the Kevin Williams ’10 Endowed Memorial Fellowship Award, my good friend and peer (Joseph Berberich ’24) and I traveled to Namibia together, where we explored the sand dunes surrounding Windhoek, as well as got to learn about the local biodiversity and ecosystems in the area. Additionally, we spent time in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana, where we swam in a pool at the edge of Victoria Falls and took a safari through Zambezi National Park (we spotted a leopard, the most rare of the Big Five!). We shared many laughs along the way, and I remember these trips we took together fondly.
The most informative and enlightening experience was the two-week independent trip to Kenya and Tanzania after finishing my courses for the semester. I took a walking tour around the city of Nairobi, pet a blind black rhinoceros, and got a customized tour of my first mosque. After exploring Nairobi, I took a flight down to Tanzania, where I began the most physically and mentally challenging backpacking trip I have ever attempted in my life: summiting Mount Kilimanjaro, one of the Seven Summits in the world. With the help of months of physical training and support of my family and friends, I was successful in my summit attempt. It was an honor to represent ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ at the highest point in Africa and carry the memory of Kevin Williams in my heart throughout the journey.
Every picture and every memory of these adventures bring me back to some of the best days and weeks of my life, and I cannot thank the Williams family enough for their continuous support of geography students such as myself. Additionally, I would like to thank the faculty of the ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ Department of Geography for bestowing the honor of this scholarship on me — as well as for providing continued guidance as I navigated a foreign continent.
The Kevin Williams ’10 Endowed Memorial Fellowship Award was established in memory of Kevin Williams ’10 to provide stipend support for one or more geography majors to travel while studying abroad.
