Watson Fellowship Finalists on Cusp of Global Experience
Olchey Tchavyntchak ’25 and Gloria Zhang ’25 are poised to study reproductive health inequities and Buddhism
Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series profiling Colby’s Watson Fellowship finalists.
Imagine the freedom of a year of international travel pursuing your deepest passion. That possibility awaits four Colby seniors competing nationally for a prestigious Watson Fellowship.
The Thomas J. Watson Foundation announces its 2025 fellows March 14. Just 40 college seniors nationwide will be named fellows and receive a one-year stipend of $40,000.
Colby’s 2025 Watson finalists—Olchey Tchavyntchak ’25, Gloria Zhang ’25, Ella Carlson ’25, and Ira Mukherjee ’25—were selected by a committee of five faculty members from a pool of 10 applicants. The finalists compete nationally with candidates representing all 41 of the foundation’s partner colleges.
A Watson Fellowship supports graduating seniors to pursue a personal project outside of the United States for one year. The fellowship’s goal is singular: a year of personal insight and perspective that instills confidence and leadership.
Tchavyntchak believes the Watson Fellowship is a step toward understanding global networks. “I think it’s crucial going out and trying to build bridges, especially experiencing it firsthand,” she said. “Going to a different country and meeting people you probably don’t share any life experiences with might seem daunting, but these experiences make you realize, at the end of the day, we’re very similar.”
Colby has participated in the program since 1971, winning 66 fellowships. For a complete list of former Colby Watson Fellows, their projects, and the countries they visited, click here.
Olchey Tchavyntchak ’25
Watson project: In Sickness and in Health: Global Reproductive Imaginary
Project countries: Thailand, The Philippines, United Kingdom, Austria, Ghana, Canada
When Olchey Tchavyntchak ’25 becomes a physician one day, she wants to deliver reproductive healthcare with confidence and compassion. Key to that is understanding the human experience on a personal level, beyond textbooks.
“There is something about emotional learning,” said Tchavyntchak. “When you’re in contact with someone, looking in their eyes, hearing their story, or just the tone of the voice—it’s different.”
She believes there is power in personal narratives, especially relating to reproductive health.
“We always think about reproductive care as an individual thing, but we need to talk about the systems of care we participate in,” said Tchavyntchak. “We need to understand each other and communicate more openly and compassionately regarding our reproductive life choices.”
As a Watson Fellow, she aims to focus on “individual realms of reproductive health” to deepen and broaden her understanding of it as a lifelong journey. Her project emphasizes emotions, imagination, and connection, all rooted in the lived experiences of people she’ll encounter.
She will meet with physicians, healthcare advocates, researchers, and local people in six countries, starting in Thailand, where both private and public sectors are incorporated in a robust reproductive healthcare scene. By talking to individuals on the frontlines, she will gain insight into what reproductive care means in various cultures and how legal, cultural, and systematic factors affect individuals’ healthcare decisions.
“One cannot avoid noting that this is a topic that possesses a particularly poignant urgency,” said Professor of Art Véronique Plesch, chair of Colby’s Watson Selection Committee. At this moment, “it is essential to be both informed by best practices from other countries and aware of practices that limit the rights and autonomy of people.”
Tchavyntchak’s heritage is Tuvan, but she came of age in Istanbul, Turkey, where her awareness of challenges in healthcare first formed. At Colby, she began exploring a medical career through coursework, participation in student-led healthcare initiatives, and study-abroad opportunities.
She spent her sophomore-year Jan Plan interning in an ob/gyn clinic in Istanbul, shadowing the provider and hearing stories from diverse patients. Soon thereafter, she experienced a setback in her own reproductive health, which fueled her commitment to improve reproductive healthcare.
As a junior, she studied public health and healthcare in South Africa, Vietnam, and Argentina while living with host families and meeting providers. The SIT Study Abroad program triggered an interest in maternal care and highlighted the “complex interplay of culture and health,” she said.
“The lectures, site visits, and experiences taught me the importance of cultural context and prioritizing lived experiences of people in shaping health practices. As a result, I began to see health holistically, where biology meets culture, and personal stories intersect with systemic inequalities.”
She also discovered the necessity of empathy, cultural sensitivity, and systemic change to improve health outcomes for all. A Watson Fellowship will allow her to build on that discovery.
“At the end of the day, I think it’s about bettering human experience. Understanding each other,” she said. “And just taking care of each other.”
Gloria Zhang ’25
Watson project: Living Buddhism: Ritual and Embodiment
Project countries: Japan, Nepal, India
As a Buddhist, Gloria Zhang ’25 turns to meditation as part of living in the world with the Dharma, or the Buddha’s teaching. Her practice is solitary, sitting in half-lotus on the floor of her room.
“There is so much to learn in this aloneness, in touching the vast, open space of mind,” said Zhang, who practices Mahayana Buddhism. Paradoxically, at its core is interconnectedness.
Zhang is brimming with questions about how others live with the Dharma. A Watson Fellowship will allow her to spend time with Buddhist practitioners in Japan, Nepal, and India to witness their everyday rituals, practice alongside them, and experience Buddhism’s “many beautiful, deep traditions.”
Zhang is also a fiction writer and poet, and she will synthesize and express her experience by writing, “to understand it better myself and to communicate that to others,” she said.
Her first encounter with the embodied practice of Buddhism came as a child during a summer vacation in Taipei visiting her aunt. At first, Zhang simply copied her aunt’s prayer, chanting, and prostration rituals until she, too, began to practice in earnest. “Some part of me was enthralled, awake, fascinated,” Zhang wrote in her Watson application. “Another part of me felt uncomfortable.”
Later, she rejected all she had learned, feeling Buddhism was backwards or the practice shameful. Then, in a “truly groundless experience of impermanence,” she returned to the Dharma and is now a dedicated practitioner.
“Gloria does not only wish to observe and participate in her chosen community and process her experiences through writing,” said Professor of Art Véronique Plesch, chair of Colby’s Watson Selection Committee. “Her quest is propelled by wide and ambitious questions, which deal with how we inhabit faith and spirituality and its multiple manifestations in daily life.”
Zhang’s Watson journey will begin in Japan studying Zen Buddhism through a sitting retreat at the Toshoji Temple in the Okayama-ken prefecture. She noted that establishing a meditation practice at the beginning of her Watson year is important as a constant to return to when feelings of loneliness, homesickness, or uncertainty arise.
“The practice of my life, through Zazen [meditation], is to sit with all of these feelings, as they are, not as I want them to be,” said the senior from Longmeadow, Mass. “With my own meditation practice as a constant, I know that I will be able to experience the entire year in its entirety: the joy and the pain and the wonder, without running away from any of it.”
In Nepal, where Buddhism has existed for thousands of years, Zhang will encounter a different form of Buddhism, one influenced by Hinduism. She will visit Muktinath Temple, monasteries in Kathmandu, and the Shechen Monastery’s archives, to expand her historic knowledge of Buddhism.
Lastly, she will visit various Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India, ending her year in Bodh Gaya to behold the Bodhi Tree, under which the Buddha first attained nirvana.
Zhang feels primed for a Watson Fellowship, with the “energy, vigor, and curiosity” to seek answers to her questions while being open to how she will change.
“I think that is kind of what [the Watson] is trying to say,” she said. “You go and you will change and that’s nothing to be scared of, but rather the thing to embrace.”
