University Fellows Experience

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University Fellows Experience

The University Fellows Experience seeks students with a true passion for service and leadership.

Those selected will pursue knowledge and action in the classroom, on the campus, in the community, and in the world.

08/24/2026

Last Monday, the Witt Fellows gathered after a summer apart for our annual Welcome Back BBQ! We welcomed Cohort 20, celebrated our seniors, and got to hear thoughtful reflections from four incredible Fellows. From the classroom to campus and beyond, Witt Fellows continue to lead with purpose, embrace new opportunities, and make an impact in meaningful ways. Here’s to another year of growth, leadership, and showing the world what it means to be a Fellow.

08/18/2026

Witt Fellows Alumni Spotlight! Today, we are proud to feature Cohort 11 member Lilia Anderson.

Lilia currently works in Denver as the Refugee Career Services Program Manager at JFS of Colorado. Their mission is to improve the lives of countless individuals and families in need throughout Colorado by taking an integrated approach to delivering comprehensive support services. Clients can access food, mental health counseling, housing assistance, employment support, and more all under one roof. The Refugee Career Services team helps refugees resettled by JFS find and thrive in their first jobs in the US.

Lilia is particularly passionate about helping refugee and immigrant women build confidence to work outside of the home, and she has striven to develop the New American Women Empowerment (NAWE) program to do just that.

Lilia shares, “I grew up in St. Cloud, Minnesota, where refugee resettlement played a huge role in shaping the community I loved. When I started college, I was pre-law and envisioned a life in politics. Fellows gave me lifelong friendships and a push to open my mind and my world, but its introduction to community-based, localized nonprofit work was particularly, inexplicably impactful. After my Black Belt Experience and learning from the great Frances Ford and Sowing Seeds of Hope, I could feel the tides turning. I couldn’t stop thinking about the direct impact they have made on Marion and Perry County. It took a few years, another program in the deep south (Delta Scholars, which I always recommend to Fellows), more projects for Sowing Seeds of Hope, and some amazing internships in my hometown to realize that community development was where I belonged. I feel honored to welcome newcomers to Denver. I deeply believe in the importance of humanitarian immigration and the Statue of Liberty’s demand to ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’”

07/04/2026

From all of us at the Witt Fellows Program, Happy 4th of July!

As our nation arrives at 250 years since its founding, we celebrate the enduring principles that continue to shape our work: free speech, open dialogue, diversity of thought, and engaged citizenship. We are proud to help develop leaders who value these freedoms and contribute thoughtfully to their communities.

06/17/2026

Witt Fellows Senior Spotlight!
After graduating with dual degrees in Biology and French Language & Literature, Sela Trimm will continue to work with the Kentuck Art Center until she departs for France in October. Working as an English teaching assistant through the TAPIF program, she will spend seven months teaching middle and high school students in rural France. Her Magnum Opus consisted of oral history interviews with fiber and textile artists, through which she sought to address the longstanding inequality in documenting and archiving the stories of female artists. One of Sela’s most cherished memories was serving as a Black Belt leader for Cohort 18, allowing her to make deep connections between her own Black Belt Experience and international trip to Cuba.

Aparna Bhooshanan is a rising senior of Cohort 16. In 2024, she took a year away from her Computer Science major to study Mandarin Chinese full-time in Taiwan under the Department of Defense’s Boren Scholarship and the State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship.
She is currently performing an internship in Washington DC and hopes to design machine translation technology to better translate between Chinese and English in the future.
For her Magnum Opus, Aparna created a centralized resource for second-generation immigrants to use prompt engineering techniques to learn more about their heritage cultures through Generative AI interactions.
Aparna’s favorite Fellows memory is eating Whizzards at Whillard’s in the Black Belt summer heat!

Addison Miller graduated from New College with a degree in International and Comparative Education Policy and minors in Blount and Chinese. Next year, she will pursue a Master’s in Politics and International Relations (East Asia) at SOAS University through the Marshall Scholarship.
Her Magnum Opus was titled, “Global Citizen or American Patriot: Study Abroad and Young American Identity Formation.”
Addison’s favorite memory from her time as a Witt Fellow is making floral arrangements with her cohort before Finalist Weekend!

05/24/2026

Cohort 19 of the Dr. Robert E. Witt University Fellows Program has officially completed their Black Belt Experience in Marion, Alabama! Over the course of the spring semester, these Witt Fellows dedicated countless hours to researching and developing service projects aimed at building lasting relationships within the Marion community through holistic collaboration. Their projects addressed topics including public health, education, economic development, and historical preservation.
This milestone reflects years of deep partnership between the University of Alabama Honors College and the Marion community. We are profoundly grateful for the opportunity to learn, grow, and serve together year after year.

05/16/2026

Witt Fellows Alumni Spotlight!
We are proud to recognize John Richardson (Cohort 14) for all the great work he has accomplished following his time as a Witt Fellow.

Since graduating, John completed a Master’s in Public Policy at the University of Oxford as an Eisenhower Global Scholar where his work focused on local communities, institutional trust, and state-level policy. Alongside his academic work, he serves as a Visiting Fellow at the Alabama Policy Institute. John spent this past season working as a wrangler on a ranch in Colorado an experience that has proven grounding and a once in a lifetime opportunity.

This fall, John will attend Stanford Law School as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar. He hopes to pursue a career in litigation with the long-term goal of working within the law to help strengthen the people and places that shape everyday life.

Reflecting on his experience in the Witt Fellows Program, John shared: “Witt Fellows was the first community on campus that truly encouraged and invested in me. It surrounded me with people who cared more about character and service than résumé lines or status. More than anything, it emphasized that life is not about trying to be someone, but about doing something meaningful for other people.”

05/13/2026

As WF20 approaches and you make plans to attend on April 2-3, 2027, we wanted to share the programming theme that will guide this year’s reunions: Head, Heart, and Hands.

Events and activities throughout the weekend will center around these three ideas. Head represents thinking deeply and leading wisely, Heart represents serving selflessly, and Hands represents acting boldly to create a lasting impact.

Be sure to update your Fellows Directory Information by visiting the Linktree in our bio!

Address

Nott Hall, 533 6th Avenue
Tuscaloosa, AL
35401

Telephone

+12053485500

Website

https://honors.ua.edu/programs/university-fellows-experience/

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