Starting next fall the College will offer a fellowship for Latino doctoral candidates who want to complete their dissertaions at Dartmouth.
The program is modeled after the College's Thurgood Marshall Dissertation Fellowship program for African American students and the Native American fellowship that began last year, said Dean of Graduate Studies Richard Birnie, who chairs the selection committee.
The Marshall Fellowships and the Native American and Latino programs provide minority doctoral candidates, who are in the last year of their research, with financial and academic support while they finish their dissertation.
"The new fellowship programs for Native American and Latino scholars were created because the problem of minority recruitment is not limited to African Americans," Birnie said.
College President James Freedman established the Marshall Fellowship in 1991 to increase the number of minority students within the academic "pipeline," Birnie said.
The Marshall Fellowship provides funding each year to sponsor two African-American students, who are chosen from about 20 applicants, Birnie said.
Like the Native American fellowship, the new Latino fellowship will sponsor one scholar each year.
The fellows receive office space, a stipend of $25,000 and a $2,500 research grant, Birnie said.
Kenneth James, a current Marshall Fellow, is here completing the Ph.D. work in Slavic languages that he started at Brown University.
"I am studying African themes in Russian verse, especially those of Pushkin, and I am also doing research on the Russian poet, Patterson." James said. "I have been interested since childhood in Russian literature."
Guthrie Ramsey, also a current Marshall Fellow, is a Ph.D. candidate in historical musicology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He is now at Dartmouth writing a dissertation on the pianist Bud Powell and the bebop movement in jazz.
"I wanted to be closer to New York City, where Powell lived," Ramsey said. "The dissertation fellowship has enabled me to devote one hundred percent of my time to my project."
This year's Native American Fellow, Christopher Jocks, is a Ph.D. candidate in religion and Native American studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He will write his dissertation on how the lifestyle of the Kahnawake tribe in Montreal shows the political and religious aspects of the culture.
"It was a terrific honor to receive this fellowship," Jocks said. "I am now closer to Montreal, and it is easier for me to do research here."
Birnie said the College hopes the scholars will serve as role models for undergraduates and will be influential in departments that do not have Ph.D. programs, Birnie said.
"The Fellowships are beneficial not only to Dartmouth, because they increase the number of African American scholars on campus, but to fellows, by giving them the time to concentrate on completing the write-ups of their dissertations away from the distractions and responsibilities of their home universities," Birnie said.
The fellowship selection committee chooses students on the basis of their academic talents, their recommendations and the College's ability to accommodate their academic interests, Birnie said.
