University President Jim Ryan surprised Liu with the news last week.
“I was informed that I had been selected as a Truman Scholar following a meeting with President Ryan about my plans for Student Council over the next year,” said Liu, a third-year student from San Anselmo, California, who is double-majoring in economics and sociology. “I was surprised by my wonderful mentors and letter-writers in the lobby of Madison Hall. I could only repeat my thanks and shock and was essentially speechless until I left the building.”
But that was not the end of his celebration.
“I did a little dance when I got to the parking lot, and I couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day,” he said. “I am humbled to join the ranks of a national community of change agents.”
“Once I decided I wanted to study public health, I looked for opportunities that would allow me to combine my passions,” she said. “The Payne Fellowship does just that. It provides me with the theoretical and practical skills I need to become a health foreign officer.”
The Donald M. Payne International Development Graduate Fellowship Program awards up to 15 fellowships valued at up to $48,000 annually for a two-year program, including up to $22,000 per year toward tuition and fees for a two-year master’s degree at a U.S. institution, as well as covering other expenses. Payne Fellows are expected to earn a degree in international development or other areas relevant to the work of the USAID Foreign Service, at a U.S. graduate or professional school approved by the Payne Program.
ARTICLE DATEARTICLE AUTHOR AUTHOR EMAIL April 14, 2021
Hajjar Baban’s experience as an immigrant to America exists in all aspects of her work, she says, from “the words that I may obsess over to images that become motifs.”
Baban – who received a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2020 and is currently a Master of Fine Arts student in in the University of Virginia’s Creative Writing Program in poetry – was awarded the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, a merit-based award to support graduate study for immigrants and children of immigrants. Founded by Hungarian immigrants Daisy M. Soros and her late husband Paul Soros, the fellowship program honors the contributions of continuing generations of immigrants in the United States.