According to senior Wiebe Boer, the chances of the Pew Younger Scholars fellowship falling to a Calvin student are relatively good. What Boer terms the "Pew Mafia" (meaning the men and women who determine the recipients of the Pew Scholarships) are often Calvin alums or otherwise connected with Calvin.
Boer and Abram Steen represent Calvin this year, carrying off $39,000 toward their doctorates. The Pew Foundation is also sending Rob Huie, Lindsay Griffis, and Mark Childers to Notre Dame for a summer seminar.
Out of this year’s eighty applicants, twenty, including Boer, were chosen for a "weekend interview session" at the University of Notre Dame. Those prestigious twenty were then submitted to twenty-minute interviews with six Christian scholars, including such notables as Nicholas Wolterstorff.
Expecting to be asked to defend the content of his paper and personal statement," Boer was surprised when the grammar in his essay fell under scrutiny.
After their interviews, the applicants are free to "eat, drink, and be merry for the rest of the weekend on Pew money and hope."
Normally ten students are chosen to receive the award, but this year eleven students were chosen--lucky for Boer.
Having grown up in Nigeria, Boer intends to attend Yale to get his Ph.D in African history.
Boer wants to teach at the college or university level, become "an international advisor of African affairs, and then the Secretary General for the UN, and most of all, a member of the Alumni Board."
Well, at least the first one. All joking aside, Boer’s goal is "to educate people so that they see Africa on equal terms and give it its [rightful place] in God’s world."