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WILLIAMS-IN-INDIA
Volunteer Lab Rats

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It was a tough sell. He worked for a couple of years to get that funded and accepted as a part of the curriculum and spent every waking hour on it and his conversation was just India, India, India, all the time. I remember we’d have a dinner at our house when we lived out […]
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I’m not a great believer in educational experiments. On the other hand, Bob seemed to get results no matter what he did. I thought whatever he did was gonna to work out not because of the way he was doing it but because he was the one doing it. My reaction would be if Bob […]
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Jim Burns and I remember we talked about this. We’re not at all certain that these experiential jaunts were worth the extraordinary, extraordinary investment that the college was asked to provide. Keep in mind, initially he wanted a whole year out of a student’s four-year life in this college. He, Gaudino himself. The first semester […]
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Imagine, attempting to build a Williams-in-India program at a time when experiential education was neither vogue nor fad, when some said that it was just another liberal experience for bleeding hearts who wanted to go to India, experience just a little bit of the pain, and then retire to the Sheraton or to the Holiday […]
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I remember seeing what we used to call mimeographed sheets talking about Williams-in-India posted in Baxter Hall. And I got a phone call from Robert Gaudino inviting me to his office in Stetson Library for an interview. I had a beguiling lack of information. I simply thought that going to India would be cool. He […]
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I entered Williams planning to be probably a physics major but would have been a bad scientist. I realized that. So I planned to take political science in the spring. In March, there was an announcement of a program that Robert Gaudino was behind called “Williams-in-India.” And this program was to be for the following […]
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I failed a year in high school. And then I got into Williams by telegram three days before my graduation from high school. I had previously planned to become a pilot in the Navy. The Navy had applied for an ROTC scholarship for me at Miami of Ohio, where I’d fly in Vietnam after my […]
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I was thinking maybe doing junior year abroad or something. I wasn’t quite sure. And then this was posted and I said “perfect.” Go to a completely foreign country with a person that I found very provocative. On the other hand, I think in part it was designed in order to get academic approval as […]
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I recall having to fill out an application and then I recall an interview. I don’t know if anybody was rejected from being picked or not. Yes, he was asking about your family, where you were born, how you had been educated, how you felt about certain educational matters and those sorts of questions. But […]
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I went to Williams never having had political science before and signed up for Poli Sci 101 and Gaudino was my professor. Of course he was one of these mesmerizing, charismatic, intimidating professors who clearly overwhelmed me. I hated being asked questions but I loved listening to him—I loved the little summaries he would give, […]
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