Students Receive a Myriad of National Awards

From the June 2018 Desktop News | The College of Arts and Sciences is consistently at the top for students achieving national scholarships and awards. This year, 14 students from the college received tens of thousands of dollars to support their research, international travel, and internships.

Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship

Environmental science major Raien Emery of Sheridan, Wyoming, received the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship for 2018-2020.

The scholarship provides $9,500 a year for full-time study during the junior and senior years and $7,000 for a 10-week internship at NOAA or an NOAA-approved facility during the summer between the junior and senior years.

The Hollings Scholarship is given in addition to existing awards the student may already receive. Since the program’s inception in 2005, more than 30 UA students have been named Hollings Scholars.

Emery works in the campus Forest Dynamics Lab to quantify the effects of disturbances on forests. Long-term, she aspires to earn a doctorate researching methods to mitigate biodiversity loss from ecosystems affected by climate change.

Fulbright Awards

The highly competitive Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides grants for individually designed study and research projects or for English-teaching assistantships. More than 11,000 applicants compete for approximately 1,950 awards each year. This year, 12 students in the college received Fulbright awards, which are sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

Research Awards

  • Nicole Henderson of Wellford, South Carolina, a doctoral candidate in anthropology, will pursue research titled “Um Ciclo Vicioso: Cultural Beliefs, Stigma, and Substance Use in Brazil.”
  • Natalie Kidd of Birmingham, a graduate in biochemistry, will conduct research titled “Modulation of Regulatory/Suppressive Actions of Gamma T-cells with a Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)” at the University of Kiel’s Institute of Immunology in Germany.

English Teaching Awards

  • Rachel Combs of Florence, a graduate in political science and German, will teach in Germany.
  • Jeremy Connor of Huntsville, a graduate in music performance (woodwind and percussion) and a current master’s student in German linguistics, will teach in Germany.
  • Carrigan Fain of Gardendale, a graduate in international studies with a minor in Spanish and captain of the UA women’s softball team, will teach in Malaysia.
  • Dwyer Freeman of Haddonfield, New Jersey, a graduate in German language and literature with a minor in critical theory through social study, will teach in Germany.
  • Maggie Holmes of Madison, Mississippi, a graduate in biology with minors in Spanish and psychology, will teach in Spain.
  • Madeleine Lewis of Huntsville, a graduate in religious studies and applied mathematics, will teach in Montenegro.
  • Richard Lewis of Birmingham, a graduate in English with minors in social innovation and leadership, business, and creative writing, will teach in Malaysia.
  • Taebryanna Sims of Mobile, a graduate in international studies with language study in French and Korean, will teach in South Korea.
  • Theresa Stoddard of Eads, Tennessee, a graduate in interdisciplinary studies, global inequities and human rights, and Spanish, will teach in Spain.
  • Annika Wulff of Army Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, a graduate in communicative disorders and German language and literature, will teach in Germany.

Boren Scholarship

Hadley Spadaccini, a senior pursuing mathematics, French, and electrical engineering majors with a minor in Chinese, has received a Boren Scholarship for the study of languages in world regions critical to U.S. interests and underrepresented in study abroad.

She will study Mandarin in China.

A lifelong love of languages has pushed her to apply for and win many scholarships to study abroad while at UA. Her goals are to one day work in an analyst or intelligence position where her love of math and language can have tangible benefit to the country.

Boren Scholarships, an initiative of the National Security Education Program, provide funding opportunities for U.S. undergraduate students to study less commonly taught language in such regions as Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Boren Scholarship recipients represent a vital pool of highly motivated individuals who wish to work in the federal national security arena. In exchange for funding, Boren Scholarship recipients commit to working in the federal government for at least one year after graduation. Amounts range from $8,000 for a summer program to $20,000 for six-to-12 months of study.