Yvonne Green ’17, Amherst’s 2016 Beinecke Scholar, plans to use the scholarship to pursue her goal of becoming a history professor.
The Albuquerque, New Mexico, native is among 20 college juniors receiving the scholarship.
The Beinecke Scholarship Program was established in 1971 by the Board of Directors of The Sperry and Hutchinson Co. to honor Edwin, Frederick and Walter Beinecke, brothers who ran the company for many years. The program offers graduate school scholarships for students “courageous in the selection of a graduate course of study in the arts, humanities and social sciences.”
Since 1975, the program has selected more than 570 college juniors from more than 100 different undergraduate institutions.
Each scholar receives $4,000 immediately before entering graduate school and an additional $30,000 while attending graduate school. There are no geographic restrictions on the use of the scholarship, and recipients are allowed to supplement the award with other scholarships, assistantships and research grants.
Green, a history major, has been working this semester at an internship through the American Research Institute in Istanbul.
“I have been spending my days reading and cataloguing documents produced by American missionaries that were active in Turkey during the 19th and 20th centuries,” she wrote in her Beinecke application. “This work has made me increasingly aware of the richness and significance of this time period, much as visiting Istanbul in general has shown how many … social forces and themes that people first started combating in the 19th century are still open questions.”
Eight Amherst students have received the Beineke Scholarship in years past and have gone on to graduate schools including Harvard University, the University of Texas and the University of Chicago. Edward Adams ‘86, a 1985 recipient, is now an associate professor of English at Washington and Lee University, and Vanessa L. Fong ’96, a 1995 Beineke Scholar, is an associate professor of Anthropology for the College.