Saturday, August 24, 2013

$1 Million-plus Fellowship adds Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders as an eligible group

As our regular readers know, we've been reaching out to underrepresented minority scholarships and fellowships on the need to properly classify Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders.

This week, we are elated to share that an underrepresented minority fellowship which provides over $1 million in annual aid is amending its eligibility policy to include Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders! Representatives from the Diversifying Faculty in Illinois program notified us about their policy change with the PIA project after hearing from us (following our national study), then again this summer.

The Diversifying Faculty in Illinois program provided an average award of $10,500 to new fellows recently, and named over 100 fellows last year. (That's over $1,050,000 in aid for new fellows in one year alone.) This program, open to underrepresented minorities, funds the education of students who want to become college educators. Fellows must pursue, and accept if offered, teaching positions at higher education institutions in the State of Illinois.

In making this important change to their eligibility policy, the DFI program joins five other scholarships that have opened their door to Pacific Islanders since last year's study.


We commend the DFI program for making the right decision, and hope that Pacific Islanders looking for a career in academia will consider this tremendous opportunity. For more information, please visit them here: link


Kawika

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