Rocky White, a University of Washington law student from Auburn, is one of 14 UW students who have been awarded Bonderman Travel Fellowships.

Students traveling with the $20,000 fellowship set off on solo journeys that are at least eight months long and take them to at least two regions of the world. While traveling, students may not pursue academic study, projects or research. UW graduate students, undergraduate students in the Honors Program and in UW Tacoma’s Global Honors Program are eligible to apply.

Collectively, the Bonderman Fellows will travel to regions around the world. Their interests include exploring how people educate their children, how they cook and eat together, how they interact with their natural environments, how they grapple with intergenerational tensions and how they preserve local customs and traditions.

While traveling on his Bonderman Fellowship, White hopes “travel to regions of the world that are the least touched by our global consumer culture.”

With a passion for cycling, he plans to plans to bike through the Western Himalayas and the remote tropical islands of the South Pacific, making stops in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Fiji. He hopes to explore how these cultures regard the idea of urgency, leisure and productivity.

White plans to receive his Juris Doctor degree from the UW in June 2013. He served as president of the Latino Law Students Association, a volunteer translator for the Latino Bar Association of Washington Legal Clinic, and was selected as a National Leadership Council on Legal Diversity scholar. He has completed internships with Microsoft and Boeing and volunteered at an organic farm in Jamaica.

Established in 1995, the Bonderman is an unusual fellowship. While other fellowships fund students to travel for international study—University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Burch, Harvard’s Sheldon and Watson among them—the Bonderman Fellowship aims to expose students to the intrinsic, often life-changing, benefits of travel. Since 1995, 179 UW students — 113 undergraduate and 66 graduate students— have been named Bonderman Fellows, including the 2012 fellows. The application process includes an essay and an interview with a selection committee, composed of University faculty and staff and former Bonderman Fellows.

The application process includes an essay and interview with a selection committee. The selection committee is comprised of university faculty and staff and former Bonderman Fellows.