This has been a banner year for Dickinson students – to date, six have received national fellowships and scholarships.

In the fall, Katie McClellan ’07, a Biology major from Asheville, NC, was awarded a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship for the 2007-08 academic year, which provides $26,000 toward her tuition in England. "It's important that medicine be understood in a social context," she says. "I'm going to spend a year before going on to medical school learning about how community and public-health efforts can make medicine more effective." Katie will be studying reproductive and sexual-health issues as she pursues an M.S. at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

In December, Bernadette McFadden ’07 was the first Dickinson College student to receive the prestigious George J. Mitchell Scholarship, sponsored by the US-Ireland Alliance. A highly competitive award, there are only 12 national scholarships awarded annually. A Policy Management major from Downington, PA, Bernadette will pursue a master’s in Social Policy at The University of Dublin, Trinity College before going to medical school.

Two juniors were recently informed that they had been named Goldwater scholars, the second year in a row that Dickinson has had two students selected. Kristina Gaff ‘08 (a Physics major from Kendallville, IN) and Christian Millichap ’08 (a Math/Philosophy double major from Royersford, PA) were selected on the basis of academic merit from more than 1,110 mathematics, science and engineering students nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. For their superior academic achievements, Kristina and Christian were placed among scholars from Stanford, Princeton and Harvard universities as well as from top-ranked liberal-arts colleges Amherst, Wellesley and Swarthmore. The scholarship will cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to $7,500 per year.

The Kathryn Wasserman Davis Foundation Projects for Peace Initiative has recently awarded $10,000 to Raju Kandel ’07, a Women’s Studies major from Nepal. Entitled “Interfaith Dialogue and Religious Understanding of Peace among School-Level Students, Teachers, and Religious Leaders in Kathmandu, Nepal”, the project aims to train 15 “Interfaith Student Leaders” from five different schools of Kathmandu, Nepal for the period of three months. Religious leaders will be brought together to share their experiences of “Interfaith Understanding of Peace through Religious Lens.” The Projects for Peace initiative invited proposals from all undergraduates enrolled as of fall 2006 at any of the 76 American colleges and universities in the Davis United World College Scholars Program. These students were encouraged to design grassroots projects that they will implement during the summer of 2007. The 100 projects judged to be the most promising and do-able were funded, with the objective to encourage and support today’s motivated youth to create and tryout their own ideas for building peace in the 21st century.

Jensen Gelfond ’08 has just been notified that he is a recipient of the Morris K. Udall Scholarship. Each year the Udall Foundation awards 80 undergraduate scholarships of up to $5,000 to juniors and seniors in fields related to the environment. Jensen, an Environmental Studies major from Asheville, NC, has served as a Recycling Intern on campus, and has been a tireless advocate for a ‘greener’ Dickinson.