Students nab top scholarships

At least eight Penn undergraduates have earned national acclaim this year, garnering highly competitive fellowships for academic merit in various fields. Among the members of the graduating class, Engineering senior Yeung Tan Li and Wharton and Engineering senior Ting Ng received National Science Foundation graduate research fellowships, while College senior Dina Westenholz won two fellowships. Westenholz, who earned a J. William Fulbright fellowship for a one-year graduate study in Iceland, declined the honor so she could accept the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation's Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship. "I cast a pretty wide net and applied for almost everything I got my hands on," Westenholz said, adding that winning the two awards was "extremely gratifying." Along with four recent Penn alumni, Westenholz was among just 98 students nationwide who received the Mellon Fellowship, given annually to fund doctoral work in Humanistic Studies. The Mellon Fellowship pays for all tuition and fees for the first year of doctoral work plus a stipend of $14,500. The winners were chosen from a pool of nearly 800 applicants. Westenholz said she accepted the Mellon, which she called "the only truly academic fellowship out there," partly because it is "more competitive." She will study next year at the Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. With seven honorees, Harvard University was the only school with more Mellon winners than Penn. Ng and Li, along with six Penn alumni who also received NSF fellowships, will merit a three-year government stipend for graduate study. Not to be outdone was the Class of 2000, from which several members have already received national scholarships for graduate education. College junior George Blaustein was one of only 20 juniors in the country to receive a Beinecke Brothers Memorial scholarship, which pays $15,000 per year for two years of graduate study anywhere, in any field. Blaustein, a History and English major, will receive $2,000 upon completion of his senior year, in addition to the yearly stipend. He is currently undecided as to what he will study and where and said he was "rather shocked" to hear he had actually won the award. "I thought it was a joke," Blaustein said, adding that "it made the decision for me -- that I'm going to graduate school." And earlier in the year, College junior Sarah Zimbler received a Harry Truman Scholarship, given to a handful of students dedicated to a career in public service and planning to attend graduate school. Engineering junior Adrian Shieh received one of that field's highest honors, the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, for academic merit in math, science or engineering. Shieh is one of 304 students to receive tuition and fees for up to $7,500 per year to cover part of the costs of the 1999-2000 academic year, his senior year at Penn. And two students, Wharton and Engineering junior Cliff Haugen and College junior Cynthia Liebman, won Morris K. Udall Scholarships. The Udall Foundation awarded 75 scholarships of $5,000 toward the cost of tuition, books, fees and room and board to sophomores and juniors from 42 states who have demonstrated a commitment to environmental fields and to Native American and Alaska native students in fields relating to health care and tribal public policy.

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