Senior wins Phi Kappa Phi fellowship

Senior Lauren Elizabeth Ware

1:11 p.m., May 19, 2005--Lauren Elizabeth Ware, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, has won the prestigious Phi Kappa Phi Award of Excellence for 2004-05.

The award is given annually by the national honor society to outstanding students for their first year of graduate study. Only 100 scholarships are awarded across the nation on a competitive basis.

Ware, a foreign languages and literatures major from Newark, received $2,000 to pursue graduate studies in French at the University of Pennsylvania.

“It was a great honor to represent the University of Delaware at the national level for the Phi Kappa Phi graduate fellowship competition, and an even greater one to win the Award of Excellence,” Ware said. “In a broader sense, it will help me to achieve my goal of becoming a professor of 19th-Century French literature.”

Ware said she was surprised to learn that she was selected to represent the University at the national level.

“It was very gratifying to win this award in my last year of undergraduate study, but I know that I owe a lot of my success to the dedication of the University's faculty and staff,” Ware said. “I will be forever grateful for the many opportunities offered by the University of Delaware, especially the Honors Program, the Writing Fellows Program and the Undergraduate Research Program.”

Mary Donaldson-Evans, Elias Ahuja Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures, said Ware’s outstanding skills and abilities mean that she will easily meet her academic goals and eventually make her an inspiring professor.

"Lauren is an amazing student," Donaldson-Evans, Ware’s adviser and thesis director, said. "She's a superb reader: Analytical, sophisticated, creative...unafraid of trying new ideas and always able to buttress them with textual examples. She's also articulate and dynamic, in short, a perfect candidate for the field she's chosen: French literature."

Phi Kappa Phi is the oldest national honor society dedicated to the recognition and promotion of academic excellence. Since its founding, the organization has initiated more than 1 million members. Its chapters are on nearly 300 campuses in the United States, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

The organization annually awards $380,000 in fellowships for first-year graduate study. Fellowship selection is based on undergraduate academic performance, leadership, evidence of potential success in graduate study, personal statement of educational perspective, purpose and objectives and three letters of recommendation.

Article by Martin Mbugua
Photo by Kathy Atkinson

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