A Warwick resident is one of just four college students statewide to receive fellowships for international travel from the Michael P. Metcalf Memorial Fund at the Rhode Island Foundation. 

Joshua Jaspers received $5,000 to support an internship in the Office of the Administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C.

The fellowships enable students to broaden their perspectives and enhance personal growth through international travel, internships and public service programs. Jaspers was selected based on the clarity of his application and his thoughtfulness, creativity, motivation, self-direction, initiative and financial need.

“This internship at CMS will put me a step closer to pursuing a career in public service. This summer, I hope to learn how to design and implement policy at the federal level,” he said.

The University of Virginia politics major spent last summer interning in Gov. Gina Raimondo’s office and will spend 10 weeks in Washington this summer.

“After graduation, I hope to pursue further education and a career in government that enables me to have impact at scale,” Jaspers said. “At some point in the future, I hope to return home and focus on work that improves the lives of Rhode Islanders.”

The other Metcalf Fellowship recipients are Margaret-Amelia Crook of Westerly, who received $4,440 to participate in the GoEco.org Wildlife Cat Sanctuary Program in South Africa; Nicholas Tierney of North Kingstown, who received $7,000 to travel through the Patagonia region of Chile; and Ryan Curtis of Coventry, who received $7,000 to spend six weeks in Peru volunteering at an orphanage and doing jungle conservation work. Curtis also received support from the Foundation’s Christine T. Grinavic Adventurer's Fund, which honors the memory of Grinavic, a University of Rhode Island graduate and 2001 Metcalf Fellowship winner who was lost at sea in 2007.

 Over the years, the Metcalf Fund has enabled more than 100 students to pursue personal enrichment and public service in locations ranging from Appalachia to Zaire. Past recipients have visited landmarks of Western historical and political thought in Europe, done a medical internship in Tanzania and volunteered at a Costa Rican orphanage. The Foundation will begin taking applications the next round of Metcalf Fellowships in November.

Metcalf was chairman and publisher of The Providence Journal at the time of his death in a 1987 bicycling accident. His widow Charlotte and the Journal company created the Metcalf Fund in his memory in 1989.

 “I wanted to create an opportunity that was a departure from the usual scholarship. I thought of making wonderful experiences – transforming experiences – happen for others,” said Charlotte about the Metcalf Fund’s mission.