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This year, thanks to the collaborative efforts of students, professors and administrators, 34 Fordham students and alumni have won scholarships and research awards that will take them to England, Sweden and Japan, among other places. Another 50 Fordham students will spend the summer pursuing their research interests on campus and abroad as recipients of summer fellowships through the University’s Saint Edmund Campion Institute for the Advancement of Academic Excellence.
According to John Kezel, Ph.D., director of the Campion Institute, the summer fellowships will help promising applicants “discern their talents within a community of scholars committed to the Ignatian goals of a Jesuit university” and prepare them to apply for other prestigious awards.
“I would like this scholarly initiative to bear fruit not only through increasing the number of fellowship awards,” Kezel added, “but by encouraging the pursuit of intellectual excellence throughout the larger university community.”
Among this year’s honored students is Rose Spear, a 2006 Fordham College at Rose Hill (FCRH) graduate who majored in chemistry and was a 2005 Campion summer fellow. This fall, she will attend Cambridge University as Fordham’s first recipient of a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Spear is one of only 40 U.S. students (and the only one from a Jesuit college or university) to be named a Gates Cambridge Scholar this year. While a doctoral student at Cambridge, she will work with an international team of researchers to develop new bone adhesion material and a biomedical method for healing broken bones.
Spear got her first taste of this type of research during the fall semester of her junior year, when she began working with Ipsita Banerjee, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry at Fordham.
“My work with Dr. Banerjee showed me how I could combine my love of medicine and my fascination for scientific research,” said Spear, who will continue to work with Banerjee in the lab until she leaves for Cambridge.
Other prestigious fellowship winners include Maria Marangos, a Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) alumna who graduated in May with a double major in international/intercultural studies and history, and a minor in classical civilization. Like Spear, Marangos accomplished a Fordham first: Last year, she became the University’s first recipient of a Monbusho Scholarship, which is awarded by the Japanese government. Marangos will attend Kyoto University and Ritsumeikan University, where she plans to study the development of modern Kyoto.
Jeanette Ynfante is one of 14 students in the nation to receive a 2006 Merage American Dream Fellowship, which provides her with up to $20,000 in funds to “pursue the American dream.” The 2006 FCLC graduate, a sociology major, came to the United States from the Dominican Republic with her family at the age of 8. She will attend Fordham Law School this fall.
Emiliano Reyes, now entering his senior year in the College of Business Administration, will be working with the Department of State at the U.S. Embassy in London for 11 weeks this summer as one of only three recipients of the Pamela Harriman Foreign Service Fellowship. The Berkeley, Calif., native has worked as an intern in the New York office of former President Bill Clinton. He is the president of the Fordham College Democrats and the founder and former editor-in-chief of The Left Hook: The Journal of Opinion at Fordham University.
Eva Martineau, now an FCRH senior and a political science major, was one of 15 students nationwide to be named a Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholar this year. This summer, she will attend a nine-week program of conferences in Washington, D.C., and work in a congressional office to develop leadership skills and gain firsthand knowledge of federal legislative procedure in health policy.
So far this year, seven Fordham students have earned Fulbright awards (for travel to the Netherlands, Hungary, Malaysia, Sweden, Japan and Ukraine) with the help of the Campion Institute, and two other students are awaiting final word on their applications.
In the meantime, the Campion Institute is offering two kinds of summer fellowships to promising students: Matteo Ricci Scholars receive summer housing to conduct their research projects, while Campion Scholars receive housing and a stipend for their work.
Among the summer fellowship class of 2006 is Daniel Larkin, an FCLC student majoring in art history. This will be the second summer fellowship for the Portland, Ore., native. Last year, he conducted research on Nazi imagery in art. As a Campion Scholar this summer, he will start to catalog the University’s Jesuit art collection. And in August, he will further his study of German art history in Berlin with the support of a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) grant, before returning to Fordham for his senior year.
Campion Scholar Colleen Cox, an FCLC senior and an English major, will travel to Paris this summer to explore theories of ex-patriotism in literature by conducting research on Irish author James Joyce and studying the influence of the City of Light on his life and work.
For Kathleen McNerney, an FCRH senior in the American Catholic Studies Program, the Campion Fellowship will provide an opportunity to travel to Ghana, where she will study the different rituals associated with the Catholic Mass in Africa and teach English to local children.
Prescott Loveland, another FCRH senior majoring in American studies, will take advantage of a Matteo Ricci Fellowship and a Tobin Travel grant to study AIDS/HIV policy in Thailand.
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