Four St. Olaf students named Graduate School Exploration Fellows
St. Olaf College students Jasmin Aramburu ‘18, Emily Hynes ‘18, Marnicia Johnson ‘18 and Zoua Lor ‘18 have been awarded Graduate School Exploration Fellowships (GSEF) through a new program that brings together some of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges and research universities.
The four are part of the first cohort of students selected for the two-year fellowship, which will provide students with a robust set of mentoring, career development, and experiential research opportunities beginning in the fall of their junior year.
The goal of the Fellows Program is to encourage students from backgrounds underrepresented in the professoriate to pursue graduate degrees and careers in academics, particularly as faculty members at liberal arts colleges.
The Fellows Program is a collaboration of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) and the research universities in the Big Ten Academic Alliance, which is a consortium of the members of the Big Ten Conference, plus the University of Chicago.
The ACM and Big Ten Academic Alliance received an $8.1 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the new program.
Each fellow will participate in a paid research internship next summer at a major research university. They will each be provided with a St. Olaf faculty mentor during their junior and senior years, and they will attend two development conferences alongside other fellows, graduate students, and faculty.
The inaugural Fellows Program Summit on August 18-19 in Chicago will be the first GSEF activity for the students.
The Fellows Program is part of a wider seven-year initiative by the ACM that seeks to break down the barriers to faculty diversity, especially at liberal arts colleges. The Fellows Program grant will support five undergraduate cohorts totaling 280 GSEF fellows, with up to 20 students drawn from each ACM college.