Chinese Flagship News

The Office of Scholar Development (OSD) has awarded 17 WKU students a total of $38,450 in Lifetime Experience Grants in the 2012-13 academic year.

The Lifetime Experience (LTE) Grant program was made possible with funding from the WKU Sisterhood, John and Jacque Hughes Jarve, the Office of Scholar Development, the Honors College at WKU and the Office of International Programs.

The awards are designed to enhance students’ competitiveness for national scholarships by supporting research, international study, creative activities, student-led engagement efforts or other scholarly activities.

“The most successful applicants for nationally competitive awards like the Truman and Rhodes scholarships tend to share a constellation of qualities and experiences. Among other things, they develop and lead significant programs in their communities or abroad; they complete multiple international engagement experiences; and they pursue research in their discipline,” said Dr. Audra Jennings, Director of OSD. “We have every expectation that this program will pay dividends for these individuals and for WKU in the years to come.”

Dr. Jennings has sound evidence that this kind of strategic funding is effective. In 2011-2012, the OSD offered LTE grants that helped two students complete a research internship and travel to an international academic conference, respectively. Subsequently, one secured a fully-funded research fellowship at the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health and the other is currently a research assistant in astronomy at the University of Tokyo. As a condition of their awards, recipients of LTE grants work closely with OSD staff to apply for several nationally competitive scholarships relevant to their academic disciplines, interests and goals.

The 2012-13 awardees are:

• Hilary Asberry, a chemistry major from Lancaster, will use her LTE Grant to enhance her research that uses paramagnetic solutions in magnetic fields to enable levitation of materials and thereby accurately analyze chemical reactions.
• Jessica Canada, a management major from Williamsburg, will use her LTE Grant to research strategies of CARE, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting poverty, in the UK, Brazil, Morocco, Germany, South Africa and Ghana as she travels around the world with Semester at Sea.
• Joanna Chang, a psychology major from Owensboro, will use her LTE Grant to support her participation in Princeton in Beijing, an intensive Chinese language program.
• Caroline Culbreth, an international affairs and Asian religions and cultures major from Edgewood, used her LTE Grant to fund an internship with AIDA, an international development NGO while studying abroad in Madrid, Spain. She will be returning to Madrid in summer 2013 to complete another internship with AIDA.
• Sarah Fox, a music performance and history major from Russellville, used her LTE Grant to found and direct “Musical Thursdays,” an after-school music enrichment program at T.C. Cherry Elementary School in Bowling Green.
• Christopher Fields, a biology major from Calvert City, will use his LTE Grant to use the Confocal Microscope at Vanderbilt University to produce images that will help him understand how genes promote tumor metastasis in Drosophila melanogaster.
• Elizabeth Gribbins, a French and political science major from Louisville, will use her LTE Grant to conduct research on Moroccan women’s participation in politics while studying abroad in Meknes, Morocco.
• Jonathan Hendrie, a biochemistry major from Elizabethtown, will use his LTE Grant to research the enhancement of a laparoscopic surgical training system in Heidelberg, Germany, as he completes an internship with the DAAD-RISE program.
• Bailey Mack, a Spanish and international affairs major from Louisville, used her LTE Grant to fund participation in a reforestation project in the Peruvian rainforest.
• Ebony Marshman, a visual arts and French major from Bowling Green, used her LTE Grant to fund an English-teaching opportunity while studying abroad in Meknes, Morocco.
• Ethan Morris, a history and social studies major from Shepherdsville, will use his LTE Grant to conduct research on the views of African-American freedmen in Louisville during the Civil War at the Filson Historical Society.
• Leland Lowell Neeper, a geology major from Morehead, will use his LTE Grant to conduct research on the past climate in the Caribbean, analyzing cave deposits in order to address water resource issues in the region.
• Emily Potts, a history and anthropology major from Owensboro, will use her LTE Grant to study Irish language at the National University of Ireland Galway in Carraroe, Ireland.
• Tyler Prochazka, an international affairs and Asian religions and cultures major from Newton, Kan., will use his LTE Grant to conduct research on Chinese and American college students’ perceptions of China’s future role in the international community.
• Daniel Shouse, a graduate student in religious studies from Bowling Green, was awarded an LTE Grant to support intensive study of the Tamil language at the South Asia Summer Language Institute at the University of Wisconsin.
• Jordan Spargo, a communication disorders major from Montgomery, Ohio, will use her LTE Grant to support her participation in a medical mission program in Honduras.
• J.P. Stovall, a Spanish, international affairs, and Asian religions and cultures major from Owensboro, will use his LTE Grant to fund an intensive Chinese language summer program in Harbin, China.

The WKU Sisterhood, chaired by Julie Ransdell and Kristen Miller, is an organization of women advancing WKU priorities through philanthropic engagement and a collective voice. Since 2010 the Sisterhood has held an annual competition for units and programs affiliated with WKU to receive up to $40,000 in funding for high-impact projects. The Office of Scholar Development’s LTE program was awarded the grant in Fall 2012.

About the Office of Scholar Development: The OSD works with students and their mentors to build research and creative agendas, helps students identify appropriate national and international scholarship opportunities, and provides intensive writing support throughout the application process. OSD staff welcome the opportunity to speak with students about nationally-competitive scholarships.

Contact: Audra Jennings, (270) 745-5043.