Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417
AMHERST, Mass.—Kimberly Shearer Palmer, a senior at Amherst College, is one of just 18 college students from across the country to receive a Luce Fellowship. She will travel next year to Asia to work as a journalist. Palmer graduated in 1997 from The Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland.
Palmer will use the fellowship to support of year of work at an English-language publication in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur or Tokyo. In her application she wrote that journalists should be “pioneers in public discussion,” and that she wants to be “the kind of journalist who doesn’t settle for the reports coming over the wires, but rather, seeks out her own information, and decides for herself what is useful to her readers. I think newspapers should serve as springboards for lively debates.”
A history major, Palmer plans to continue her career in journalism. At Amherst, she has been a columnist, opinion editor and reporter for the college newspaper, The Amherst Student and The Indicator, a political journal. She has worked as a reporter with the Washington Post, USA Today and the Daily Hampshire Gazette(Northampton, Mass.).
Since 1974, the Luce Scholars Program has provided opportunities for young Americans, chosen from 67 leading colleges and universities, to live and work in Asia. The Luce Scholars, who can come from any field of study other than Asian studies, are supported by the Asia Foundation, an organization with offices throughout Asia. Placements can be made in Brunei, China and Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
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