Quantcast
Channel: scholarshipform.org Feed
Viewing all 8319 articles
Browse latest View live

State Farm Foundation scholarships awarded

$
0
0

BLOOMINGTON - State Farm Companies Foundation has announced winners of its scholarships.

The foundation has awarded 100 four-year scholarships valued at $5,000 to children or legal dependents of State Farm employees, agents or retirees. The competition is conducted through the National Merit Scholarship Program by the National Merit Scholarship Corp.

Pantagraph-area winners, their parents, majors, colleges and high schools are:

A-F

Susanna Angles, Kris and Frank Angles, biochemistry, Illinois State University, University High School; Reese Borlin, Scott Borlin, forestry, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, Washington Community High School; Matthew Boyd, Joseph and Kristy Boyd, undecided, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Normal Community West High School; Carter Bruns, Scott and Janette Bruns, data science, Purdue University, U High; Kelsey Chang, Weihan and Chang-Yuan Chang, electrical and computer engineering, UIUC, Illinois Math & Science Academy; Kevin Chen, Weiping and Ying Chen, computer science, Carleton College, Normal Community High School; Anna DeBruine, Lisa DeBruine, biomolecular engineering, Milwaukee School of Engineering, NCHS; Nathan Dotterer, Jason and Lynn Dotterer, actuarial science, ISU, Prairie Central High School; Marissa Foley, Ron and Theresa Foley, Spanish and modern languages-German emphasis, Northern Arizona University, Tri-Valley High School; Nicolas Forcade-Perkins, Michelle Perkins and Jo Forcade, electrical engineering, SIUC, NCWHS.

G-K

Nicholas Gilhaus, Greg and Danette Gilhaus, computer engineering, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, NCHS; Jacob Haggarty, Barry and Helen Haggarty, business administration, Indiana University, NCHS; Hanson Hao, Wei Hao, mathematics, Stanford University, IMSA; Annika Hiredesai, Narendra and Anupama Hiredesai, neuroscience, Northwestern University, NCHS; Matt Hunt, Jeff Hunt and Deanna Leitz, computer science, ISU, Gibson City-Melvin-Sibley High School; Matthew Jacquot, Scott and Tamara Jacquot, pharmacy, Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, NCHS; Ella Joaquin, Domingo and Victoria Joaquin, economics and international studies, Loyola University Chicago, NCHS; Claire Johnson, Chase and Nicole Johnson, data science, Iowa State University, Bloomington High School; Kevin Kato, Rich and Wendy Kato, organ performance and music composition, UIUC, homeschool; Adarsh Kurumbail, Ravisankar and Lakshmi Kurumbailmadam, mechanical engineering, Purdue, NCHS.

L-R

Macy Littell, Gary and Deanna Littell, biology, Wellesley College, Eureka High School; Megan Marshall, Keith and Ironette Marshall, mechanical engineering, University of Indianapolis, NCWHS; Riley McDonald, Gregg and Andrea McDonald, chemical engineering, UIUC, NCHS; Aidan Medlock, Bryan and Sara Medlock, biology, Saint Louis University, BHS; Alex Mortenson, Michael and Greta Mortenson, biochemistry and pre-medicine, Augustana College, TVHS; Ajitesh Muppuru, Vasu and Suneetha Muppuru, aerospace engineering, UIUC, NCHS; Jared Nutt, Greg and Kris Nutt, engineering, Purdue, NCHS; Jacob Pacheco, Al and Debra Pacheco, computer science, University of Alabama, TVHS; Katy Quinn, David and Jennifer Quinn, engineering, SIUC, NCHS; Jennifer Rowe, Dan and Vicki Rowe, finance and accounting, UIUC, NCHS.

S-W

Katherine Schieltz, Dyann Schieltz, chemical engineering, Purdue, NCHS; Ross Schmidgall, Paul and Cherie Schmidgall, engineering, Heartland Community College, homeschool; Claire Schwarzentraub, Brian and Tracey Schwarzentraub, secondary education, ISU, Mahomet-Seymour High School; Jake Simonson, Steve and Rhonda Simonson, neuroscience, University of Arizona, NCHS; Jacob Speirer, Jeff and Jennifer Speirer, computer science, Augustana, NCHS; Anna Stephan, Bob and Cara Stephan, finance and accounting, Baylor University, NCHS; Caleb Stevenson, Tod and Michelle Stevenson, exercise science leading into a doctorate in physical therapy, University of Evansville, TVHS; Matthew Taylor, Dave and Marcie Taylor, aerospace engineering, UIUC, U High; Zach Tomerlin, Chris and Donna Tomerlin. exercise science, St. Ambrose University, Central Catholic High School; Andy Trower, Steven and Penny Trower, accounting, minor in flute performance, ISU; NCWHS; Ellie Walker, Steve and Teresa Walker, political science, Miami University of Ohio, NCHS; Zachary Wolford, Mike and Debbi Wolford, nursing, ISU, U High.


The Jasper Newton Foundation awarded $245,700 in local scholarships in 2019

$
0
0

JASPER COUNTY & NEWTON COUNTY - Every year in the spring the Jasper Newton Foundation proudly awards scholarships to graduating seniors in Jasper and Newton counties. This year Jasper Newton Foundation awarded $245,700 scholarship dollars including one student from each county receiving the full-tuition Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship,

Around 45-50 scholarship funds, set up by local donors, are utilized so students have some financial support when they start their college or trade-school career. The chosen graduating seniors have met the scholarship qualifications which are unique to each scholarship fund. Jasper Newton Foundation is thankful for its local donors who value higher education and training and who want to see a brighter future for our youngest community members. The Jasper Newton Foundation Inc. is a local nonprofit organization that connects residents of Jasper County and Newton County, Indiana with causes they care about through coordinated investments and strategic grantmaking. It's a way for local people to come together and solve local challenges facing Jasper and Newton Counties every day, leaving a legacy of giving in the community. By working as an advocate for the whole nonprofit sector and connecting residents and organizations across the two counties, the Jasper Newton Foundation enables a larger impact beyond what one individual nonprofit or donor can accomplish.

The Jasper Newton Foundation Inc. is a local nonprofit organization that connects residents of Jasper County and Newton County, Indiana with causes they care about through coordinated investments and strategic grantmaking. It's a way for local people to come together and solve local challenges facing Jasper and Newton Counties every day, leaving a legacy of giving in the community. By working as an advocate for the whole nonprofit sector and connecting residents and organizations across the two counties, the Jasper Newton Foundation enables a larger impact beyond what one individual nonprofit or donor can accomplish.

Ashland County student receives Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program scholarship

$
0
0

Sixty-five students, including Cole Kirkbride from Ashland County, have been awarded scholarships from the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP) and Foundation. These scholarships are awarded to qualified students pursuing careers in the natural gas and oil industry.

Among this year's scholarship recipients is Cole Kirkbride from Loudonville. Kirkbride attends Ohio Northern University and is studying mechanical engineering. This is his third time being awarded an OOGEEP scholarship.

To date, OOGEEP has awarded close to half a million dollars in scholarships to students from Ohio, or students pursuing higher education in Ohio, in order to help relieve some of the financial burden of attending the college, university, technical or trade school of their choice. This year, these winners represented 32 Ohio counties, 27 institutions of higher education and 17 different majors.

"Ohio's natural gas and oil producers are committed to seeking out and assisting the next generation of leaders that will help innovate, explore, develop and produce our future energy resources," said Karen Matusic, OOGEEP Scholarship Committee chair, and Public and Government Affairs Manager at XTO Energy, an ExxonMobil subsidiary. "Our scholarship recipients represent some of our state's best and brightest students. We are excited to be able to play a role in their educational journey."

To be considered for a scholarship, students were required to submit an essay describing their personal career goals in the natural gas and oil industry, submit multiple letters of recommendation and meet other academic requirements.

"As Ohio's natural gas and oil industry helps fuel our nation's renewed energy independence, there's a strong need to have a strong, local workforce," said Rhonda Reda, OOGEEP Executive Director." In 2011, our industry employed 14,000 employees in Ohio - and now that number is close to 200,000. With that kind of growth, it's beyond encouraging to see such a high caliber of scholarship applicants that are excited about getting an education and joining our industry."

The scholarships are made possible by contributions from those who are passionate about the future of the industry's workforce, funded through OOGEEP's 501(c)(3) Foundation. Each scholarship is renewable up to four years.

‘Scholarship, SC staffers promotions issues pushed Dalits away from Congress’

$
0
0

Choudhary Santokh Singh managed to win Jalandhar parliamentary seat but his victory margin came down in a direct contest with Charanjit Singh Atwal of SAD, which has been facing voters anger over issues like sacrilege. He explains the shift in voting patterns in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.
Your margin came down very drastically this time even as Jalandhar has traditionally been a safe seat for the Congress. What happened?
It happened due to religious polarization this time. It never happened earlier in Punjab, especially in Doaba region. BJP this time succeeded in polarizing the voters this time and it is not a good sign for the state or the country. Then PDA aligning with left parties and BSP also caused some damage to us but we shall overcome this loss in assembly polls. There were certain local issues too.
Did you lose your traditional core vote base in urban areas this time ?
We suffered loss of our core vote base in urban areas due to polarization. Earlier, we used to do better in urban areas as compared to rural areas but for the first time the trend was reversed. Luckily, a significant chunk of Sikh voters turned to us this time with issue of sacrilege and police firing at Nakodar in 1986 weighing heavily on their minds. I raised issue of Nakodar firing in most of my election speeches and now after winning I shall pursue this issue for justice. Panthic constituency Shahkot gave us the biggest lead and played crucial role in victory.
Dalits turned towards BSP in Doaba region in a major way. How do you explain this phenomena?
Even as the Congress managed to retain its base among Dalit voters, a chunk of them went to BSP as issue of postmatric scholarship was working on their minds. In fact, BSP caused more damage to SAD-BJP, but some damage was caused to us too. Pending promotions of scheduled caste employees in government jobs was also a factor. Dalit sentiment was strong this time and BSP managed to exploit it and targeted the Congress through false propaganda even as we fought for the SCs. BSP created a false impression that it fought for rights of SCs even as theirs was more rhetoric than fighting it at institutional level.
What will be your agenda for Jalandhar constituency?
I shall pursue the projects already in pipeline. I shall try for upgradation of Adampur domestic airport to international airport and beginning of cargo flights so that farmers here can opt for diversification and their produces can be sent abroad. I will also try to bring industrial cluster here especially the heavy industry. We also need an AIIMS-like medical centre here to cater to entire Doaba. I will urge the state government to increase spending on education and fill up the vacant posts. I shall be trying to get a centre of higher education in Jalandhar.


With just 52 MPs, what kind of opposition will the Congress be in Parliament?
Challenge is very big but we shall play role of very effective opposition. We shall fight every inch.

What criteria were used to offer scholarship to Minister’s daughter relative to other top performers?

$
0
0

I can tell you with 100% certainty that the British Chevening Scholarship does not work this way, since I won one in 1999. The tuition aspect is paid directly to the university. We received a monthly stipend - paid into a UK bank account - once in the country. The plane tickets were paid for directly by the British Council and if my memory serves me right, we were given 680 pounds at the British Council office as soon as we landed at Gatwick. I use we because three of us travelled together. Therefore, Mr. Harmon must be referring to a Government of Guyana scholarship. The SN article mentioned the Minister's daughter was a top performer at a private school. That is wonderful and commendable, but it raises an important question. What criteria were used to offer this scholarship to the Minister's daughter relative to other top performers who are from the public schools and other private schools? When will we see all the awardees on a central website going back a few decades?

Editor, as someone who has studied Guyana's political economy, I can safely say the country has moved from ethno-party paramountcy of Burnham to ethno-family-friend elected oligarchy under Jagdeo/Ramotar and now to ethno-family-friend elected oligarchy under Granger.

Yours faithfully,Tarron Khemraj

Mitchell Robson, of Marblehead, won the Calvin Coolidge Scholarship as he prepares for college - Itemlive

$
0
0

Mitchell Robson is enjoying some R&R in Italy this month, and it's safe to say he's earned it.

Robson, of Marblehead, who just completed his junior year at St. John's Prep in Danvers, already has one major hurdle toward his future completed. He will have all four years of college, including room and board, paid for in full. That's because he is one of four who were named Calvin Coolidge Scholars by the presidential foundation bearing the same name.

If the name Mitchell Robson sounds in any way familiar, it may be because he was the winner of spelling bee for three straight years, from 2014-16. And, keeping it all in the family, his younger brother, Will, won it in 2018.

Robson said the disciplines learned from studying spelling words had a lot to do with his academic accomplishments, up to and including winning the scholarship (more than 3,400 students applied).

"It taught me how to be disciplined," said Robson, calling from Rome last week. "I also developed a sense of grit that helped me make the transition to high school." The main criterion for being a Coolidge Scholar is academic excellence. Students must also demonstrate a keen interest in public policy, an appreciation for the values Coolidge championed, and a record of service, and humility.

The Scholarship is non-partisan and winners may pursue any academic discipline they choose, according to the foundation.

John Calvin Coolidge, the nation's 28th president, was known to be frugal and fiscally conservative.

When Robson and his mother, Lena, began researching scholarships last year, she came across the Coolidge grant, he said. Applying for it was a rigorous process, that included sending transcripts, a résumé, getting two recommendations, and writing three essays - two of them about Coolidge.

"One of the reasons (the foundation) started the scholarship was to garner knowledge about Coolidge," Robson said. "I definitely admire him. I admire the work he did with the federal budget while he was president. He had some revolutionary economic and money ideas."

One of Robson's essays concerned how he thinks Coolidge would have handled today's budget deficit.

"I talked about cutting excessive expenses - and I think we have a lot of excessive expenses - but I also talked about how important the human element is too."

In the other essay, Robson said, he discussed a more general overview of Coolidge's philosophy on life.

"I appreciated his value of hard work," Robson said, "and of how people seem to want to be portrayed as victims." What's left for Robson is his choice of college. He has a good part of his senior year to narrow it down, but with a full scholarship in his pocket - the grant will cover costs for any accredited college or university in the United States - money won't be an object.

"I'm looking for a pace where the campus is a good fit," Robson said. "But I have a preference for the East Coast."

Among those on his list are Harvard, Princeton and MIT, he said.

Students apply for the scholarship during their junior year of high school. Scholars are selected through a multi-stage review process. Semifinalist juries meet across the country to consider top applicants.

Twelve finalists are invited to finalist Interview weekend at the Coolidge Historic Site in Plymouth Notch, Vt., where they interview with the jury, chaired by former Vermont governor and Coolidge Foundation Vice-Chairman James H. Douglas.

Speaking on behalf of the finalist jury, Douglas said: "Year after year we are impressed by the level of achievement demonstrated by Coolidge Scholarship applicants.

"This makes the work of our juries difficult, but leaves us confident that America's future is in good hands. It is an honor for the Coolidge Foundation to invest in these young people and we look forward to following their successes for years to come."

Corwin Car Show proceeds funds Scholarship Fund for next 10 years

$
0
0

Last year's Chris Corwin Scholarship Car Show brought in over $15,000. The organizers were so thankful to all of the sponsors, spectators, and participants for coming out to attend the show.

The show is held in memory of Chris Corwin, an outstanding Minisink Valley Middle School Technology teacher whose life ended tragically in a car accident. All of the money raised goes directly to the Chris Corwin Scholarship Fund.

This year's show, which took place on May 20 at Minisink Valley Middle School in Slate Hill, proved to be another success. The show brought in another $9,000. The funds raised over the years the show has been taking place have allowed the Scholarship Fund to award a $2,500 scholarship to a graduating Minisink Valley Senior for the next 10 years.

This was the final Chris Corwin Show and organizers are thankful to all who participated and donated over the years. A not-for-profit called "Elevate OC" was created to oversee the car show and the scholarship fund.

dkessler@th-record.com

Church offers scholarships to indigent students

$
0
0

Kingdom Men's Network, the men's fellowship unit of House on the Rock Church, the Refuge, Abuja, on Sunday offered scholarships to 10 indigent secondary and university students of the church.

Fidel Pepple, Chairman of the Network, said in an interview with newsmen that the scholarships were for a school session and that the beneficiaries were from eight different families in the church.

He said that the scholarship was a way of encouraging students who were exemplary in the teenage and youths sections of the church to perform better.

Pepple said that part of the selection process was the financial challenges faced by parents of the beneficiaries to further their education.

"Our intervention was to help ensure they continue with their academics and not drop out. We selected these 10 through a combined effort between the youth section and the network.

"The youth department did the selection and forwarded the names to us while we enforced the scholarship," he said.

Pepple said that after the one year academic sponsorship, a review of their performance would be carried out to assess the sustainability of the scheme.

One of the beneficiaries, Ofunne Ruth, a 300-level student of the University of Abuja, while expressing gratitude, said the scholarship was not expected by any of the beneficiaries.

"I am glad to be one of the beneficiaries as you always get rewarded for working in the House of God. Two days ago, I heard rumours of the scholarship but I never imagined my name would be among the beneficiaries," she said.

Another beneficiary, Jemimah Hussaini, said she felt excited as the scholarship came as a surprise to her and that she was glad to be so honoured.

She said since her father died, her mother had battled financially to ensure she attended good schools.



Pan African University Scholarships for Young Africans 2019/2020 - CLASSIC NEWS

$
0
0

Pan African University Scholarships for Young Africans 2019/2020| Fully Funded - Pan African University (PAU) is now accepting applications young, qualified, talented and enterprising applicants from African countries for its 2019 Masters/PhD Scholarship. The deadline for submission of applications for the Pan African University Scholarships is 28th June, 2019.

The Pan African University is an initiative of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union. It is a Premier continental university network whose mission is to provide quality postgraduate education geared towards the achievement of a prosperous, integrated and peaceful Africa.

Young, qualified, talented and enterprising applicants from African countries and the African Diaspora are invited to apply to join Masters or PhD degree programmes at any of the following four PAU institutes listed below. Candidates with potential, motivation and who desire to play transformative leadership roles as academics, professionals, industrialists, innovators and entrepreneurs are particularly encouraged to apply.

Reasons to join PAU:

  • Excellent programmes taught by world class faculty;
  • A broad network of academic and professional partners on the continent and beyond;
  • Attractive scholarship scheme;
  • Joint degree awards from the Pan African University and its Host Universities;
  • Excellent career prospects in some of the fastest growing industries, with relevant career guidance; and
  • Vibrant, multi-cultural and Pan African learning and research environments.

Pan African University Institutes.

  • Pan African University Institute for Basic Sciences, Technology and Innovation (PAUSTI), at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), Kenya.
  • Pan African University Institute for Life and Earth Sciences- including Health and Agriculture (PAULESI), at the University of Ibadan (UI), Nigeria.
  • Pan African University Institute for Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences (PAUGHSS), at the University of Yaounde II and the University of Buea, Cameroon.
  • Pan African University Institute for Water and Energy Sciences -including climate change (PAUWES), at the University of Tlemcen, Algeria.

Pan African University Scholarship Eligibility.

Admission Requirements for Masters Programmes *

Candidates must satisfy the following conditions:

  • Undergraduate degree from a recognized university,with at least a second class upper division or its equivalent, in a relevant field;
  • Certified copies of relevant certificates, transcripts (from university and high school),
  • National passport (personal details page);
  • Clear colored passport size photograph(2cmx2cm);
  • Detailed CV;
  • Recommendation letters from 2 Professors
  • A letter of motivation justifying why you want to pursue your study in the Pan African University;
  • Maximum age of 30 years for male and 35 years for female applicants.

Candidates may be required to undergo a written/oral examination after preselection.

Candidates for the Master in Conference Interpreting and Translation programmes are required to have excellent knowledge of at least two of the African Union's official languages (Arabic, English, French and Portuguese).

Admission Requirements for Doctoral Programmes

Candidates must satisfy the following conditions:

  • A Masters degree in a relevant field from PAU or any internationally recognized university;
  • Certified copies of relevant certificates, transcripts,
  • Copy of Passport (personal details page);
  • A 3 to 4 page research concept note (tentaive title, research questions, objectives, significance of the research etc...)
  • Recommendation letters from 2 Professors
  • Clear colored passport size photograph (2cmx2cm);
  • Detailed CV
  • A letter of motivation justifying why you want to pursue your study in the Pan African University;
  • Maximum age of 35 years for male and 40 years for female applicants.

The African Union Commission will offer full scholarships to the successful African candidates.

How to Apply for Pan African University Scholarship.

Interested candidates who meet the criteria listed above should apply by clicking on the "Apply" button below:

Apply Here Official Link

Steps to apply:

  1. After reading the conditions, Click on 'Register'
  2. Provide a valid username and your email
  3. Check your inbox to confirm the registration by clicking on the confirmation link (Please check the spams as well)
  4. Provide a valid password
  5. Login using your credentials
  6. Open the 'Application' page and provide all your data
  7. Click on Save button and after finishing click on FINISH button

* If you didn't finish the application, you can come back later and "Login" again using your email and password *

The call for applications is open from May 14, 2019 to June 28, 2019.

Applications received after this deadline will not be considered.

Further enquiries can be made through: pau.scholarships@africa-union.org.

Hunterdon Healthcare Foundation presents scholarships to 30 recipients

$
0
0

The recipients received scholarships from the Jean Alvater Baker Scholarship, Wingover Scholarship for Nursing Education, Albert Kahn and Mary Kahn R.N. Scholarship, the Patricia M. Psenisky Nursing Scholarship, Millie E. Apgar Scholarship for Nursing Education and the Hunterdon Medical Center Auxiliary Educational Fund.

Receipients included Susan Stark of Bethlehem; Nazir Qureshi of Flemington; Kristine Peterson of Hampton; Mia Mazuch or Three Bridges; Annalise Bertrand of Phillipsburg; Tara Teipel of Pittstown; Rebecca McKinnon of Bloomsbury; Paige Cordero of Pittstown; Megan Bill of Kingwood; Clare Nugent of Milford; Andrew Kopf of Pittstown; Mary Allen of Three Bridges; Jessica Brynildsen of Lebanon Township; Danielle Malave of Whitehouse Station; Lauren Spilletti of Flemington; Allison Varga of Lebanon Township; Mary Jo Loughlin of Gladstone; Monique Whalen of Clinton; Roberta Mascobetto of Kendall Park; Wendy Rauen of Stockertown, Pa.: Yasmin Glennon of Phillipsburg; Miriam Gonzales of Raritan; Averi Whalen of Clinton; Allyson Naiken of Ringoes; Nicole Meyers of Glen Gardner; Della Porzl of Washington; Gracious Anithanam, Allison Fisher, Jennifer Guardado, Jane Higley, Jessica Karroll, Marisa Probst, Bradley Schmidt, Stephanie Stone, Sydney Stoter, Leona Tomy, Diane Vence and Alexa Watchorn.

The Hunterdon Healthcare Foundation, the fundraising organization for the Hunterdon Healthcare System, seeks gifts and grants from individuals, corporations, foundations and other sources to assist the Hunterdon Medical Center and its affiliated non-profit organizations, such as Hunterdon Regional Community Health and Hunterdon Hospice, in fulfilling their mission to meet the community's need for high quality healthcare. Annual charitable gifts to the Hunterdon Healthcare Foundation provide the essential support needed to expand clinical services and programs and maintain and enhance our facilities.

Mount Olive business group awards scholarships

$
0
0

MOUNT OLIVE TWP. - The Mount Olive Area Chamber of Commerce (MOACC) presented scholarships two high school students and two college students, at the annual chamber awards dinner on June 13.

John Bigger and Sarah Leonard, both seniors at Mount Olive High School, will each receive a $750 scholarship. Madeline Crisp and Margaret Schaffer, current college students, each earned a $500 scholarship through the MOACC Family Scholarship, open to family members of current chamber members.

Bigger is headed to the Georgia Institute of Technology to major in computer science and business. An Eagle Scout and N.J. Scholar, Bigger was inducted into numerous national honors societies, attended the Governor's School in the Sciences residential program, and dedicated his time to business and science-based clubs and local volunteerism, said a statement.

Leonard will study business analytics and operations management at the University of Maryland, College Park campus. A member of multiple national honor societies, Leonard has been active at school in academics, athletics, and school government.

Scholarships for chamber members included Crisp, daughter of chamber member Cheryl Crisp. For the scholarship, she submitted an essay "The Biochemistry of My Life." She majors in molecular biology and minors in Irish and history at the University of Pittsburgh.

Schaffer, daughter of member Patrice Schaffer, is pursuing an associate degree in musical theater at County College of Morris. She discussed her love of volunteerism in her application essay.

Mid-Shore Community Foundation awards scholarships

$
0
0

EASTON - The Mid-Shore Community Foundation is the largest provider of scholarships in the Mid-Shore region, and this year students from Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Talbot and Queen Anne's Counties received scholarships worth over $700,000.

The size of the program has grown so much that, for the first time, the annual Scholarship Awards Breakfast was spread over two weekends. Caroline, Kent and Queen Anne's students received their scholarships on May 11, while Dorchester and Talbot students received their awards on May 18.

Over 350 applications were received for 83 scholarships, making it an especially competitive process. Applicants were sorted by counties, educational or career goals and special interests that matched the individual criteria set by donors who established the various component funds at the Mid-Shore Community Foundation that provide scholarships.

Then 90 volunteers, serving on over 20 different committees, reviewed the applications and made the selections.

Originally intended for high school students planning to attend two- or four-year colleges, the scholarship program now also addresses the financial needs of students continuing their education at an institute of technology, vocational school or career college that awards academic degrees or professional certifications.

Recipients, both high school students and adults wishing to continue their education, are now attending programs in automotive technology, welding, aviation mechanics, radiology technology and culinary arts.

In his comments at the breakfasts, MSCF President Buck Duncan said, "We're especially proud that this year we're awarding scholarships to both traditional and nontraditional students, most in the beginning of their post-secondary education pursuits and some in the midst of their entrepreneurial dreams. Some students are going away, some are attending classes online or at local satellite campuses."

"Educational opportunities are changing, and thanks to initiatives by MSCF's board of directors and our donors, our scholarship opportunities are changing to meet the needs of students at various points in their life journeys," Duncan said.

Haines Holt was on hand to personally congratulate 14 new Roberta B. Holt scholars. Roberta Holt was a native of Caroline County and a graduate of Federalsburg High School. She went on to have a successful career as a psychotherapist. This scholarship was established by Holt's family to support Caroline County traditional and non-traditional students.

Holt awards ranged from $5,000 for trade and workforce programs to $32,500, paid over four years for traditional college programs. An additional 17 returning Holt scholars had their scholarships renewed for a total of $253,500, bringing the Holt scholarship total, over the past 7 years, to $1.36 million.

Several new scholarships were introduced this year. The Marvin B. Coppage Children's Hunter Education Fund provided $1,000 to a student for coursework in gunsmithing.

The Reade and Mary Corr scholarship, established by the advisors of the Corr Fund, gave its first $1,000 award to a Kent County student.

The Jochheim & Knotts Memorial Scholarship awarded $16,600 over four years to a St. Michaels High School student.

The $1,500 Bobi Kendall scholarship was given to a student interested in politics and/or a career in public service.

The Mary B. Lynch Scholarship, established by the estate of Lynch, provided $17,700 to a Caroline County student over four years.

The Talbot County Public Schools Education Foundation Career and Technology scholarship for $1,500 was awarded to a student planning to study diesel mechanics.

The keynote speaker at both events was John Handley, special assistant to Peter Franchot, Comptroller of Maryland. John spoke from his heart about the impact his MSCF scholarship had on his life.

Handley told students he doubts college would have been an option for him without the financial assistance he received, but more important to him was the knowledge that someone, a committee of scholarship readers, and something, the MSCF, believed in him. He found motivation and encouragement in that, and he urged the 2019 MSCF scholars to remember all those who believe in them and are rooting for their success.

Duncan thanked the donors who make these scholarships possible, scholarship committee co-chairs Alice Ryan and John Lewis, and the 90 volunteers who did the hard work required to select this year's recipients.

In his concluding remarks, Duncan summed up the program. "We know that education is a key to individual achievement and to the quality of life in our community," he said.

"We are proud to sponsor this program and to distribute truly significant scholarship aid to deserving students who we hope will consider coming back to this community," Duncan said. "it's a great place, and you can make a good life here."

Applications for 2020 awards will be available online at MSCF.org on Sept. 1, and must be submitted by February 1, 2020. For additional information about the Mid-Shore Community Foundation's scholarship program, email info@mscf.org or call 410-820-8175.

Whizdom Society by MQDC sets up "Whizdom Scholarship" to support young people

$
0
0

Whizdom Society by MQDC sets up "Whizdom Scholarship" to support young people

with accommodation and study grants in association with leading universities nationwide

Whizdom Society by MQDC sets up "Whizdom Scholarship" to support young people · Whizdom Society by MQDC continues to expand its activities. After serving breakfast to all Whizdom residents it is continuing to support young Thais to be a community of smart and good-hearted people by organizing the Whizdom Scholarship project to develop skills and potential for competing on the world stage. Combining support in accommodation with education grants, the initiative will gradually involve higher education throughout the country, starting with 3 of Thailand's leading universities.

Whizdom Society by MQDC has established Whizdom Scholarship for students of good character who are involved in university and social initiatives but lack resources, especially in accommodation, to support their university studies. The scheme will support education and housing, providing 8 condominium units of Whizdom brand.

(17 June 2019, Bangkok) MQDC - Magnolia Quality Development Corporation Limited, a leading Thailand-based international property developer with a commitment 'for all well-being' and developments including Whizdom projects, is working to create a knowledge-sharing society through "Whizdom Scholarship" to provide a positive model for young Thais under a vision of 'a community of smart and good-hearted young people who care for society at large'.

Mr. Assada Kaeokhiao, President of Whizdom at MQDC, said: "The brand's DNA is to serve the new generation, so we create activities to align with young lifestyles. After recently providing breakfast to all Whizdom residents, we have organized the Whizdom Scholarship project to support Thai youths as a community of smart and good-hearted people, helping the new generation develop themselves in all dimensions. With this project we aim to give students the opportunity to fully focus on learning, while Whizdom takes care of their accommodation. With funding support of over THB30 million, we are reaching out to the new generation to help Thai society become a community of smart and good-hearted people. We hope that linking up with educational institutions will help improve quality of life for students and expand housing scholarships as well as support for education."

Mr. Krissayuth Chavavitayatham, Vice President of Whizdom Society, said: "Whizdom Scholarship was established for students who lack opportunities to attend higher education by initially helping provide accommodation for attending university, working hand-in-hand with 3 universities: Chulalongkorn University, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, and Srinakharinwirot University. Ten students will receive scholarships, with further expansion planned. Recipients must be students who lack financial resources, have good character, and participate in university and social initiatives, without restrictions in their field of study or academic performance. The project will provide housing support throughout their undergraduate degrees. Each university can set criteria it sees as appropriate. Whizdom Society by MQDC provides the grants to universities and students without any requirement on them to use Whizdom projects.

"Whizdom is providing 8 ready-to-move-in units totaling over THB30 million for scholarship recipients in the 2019 academic year: 4 at Whizdom @ Punnawithi Station, 2 at Whizdom Avenue Ratchada-Ladprao, and 2 at Whizdom Station Ratchada-Thapra. Support for living expenses includes:

* Funding for common area management fees during the project of about THB180,000/year,

* Decorating budget at all 8 units at THB120,000/unit,

* Study and program support totaling THB50,000,

* Funding for utilities such as water and electricity of up to THB1,500/month or actual use,

* Support for high-speed internet service at THB799/month.

"We believe that Whizdom Society by MQDC will be a part of providing good activities to create Thai society for smart and good-hearted people. We are providing an opportunity for the new generation to develop their potential and creating educational opportunities with this housing. We are committed to continuing to support Thai society," said Mr. Chavavitayatham.

Asst. Prof. Dr. Chaiyaporn Puprasert, Vice Chancellor for student development and alumni relations at Chulalongkorn University, said: "I am delighted and honored to receive support from Whizdom to provide full accommodation, taking care of common area management fees, utilities, Internet. I believe this will be a good opportunity for young people. Students of good character pursuing learning but without residential property will find quality of life and good education. I am pleased to receive this scholarship support to inspire a community of smart and good-hearted people in Thailand."

Ms. Panadda Phoungpee, Acting Head of Financial Aid Group for students of King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), said: "I thank Whizdom Society by MQDC for organizing initiatives like Whizdom Scholarship to provide housing scholarships to youths of good character without funds for accommodation. Support for self-development will increase opportunities to develop and practice skills for students and learning outside the classroom. Whizdom Scholarship will contribute to Thai society by developing and building both quality of education and quality of life through accommodation for young people."

Mr. Sompong Jaidechoey, Assistant to Chancellor for student development of Srinakharinwirot University (SWU), said: "On behalf of the university, I am happy and grateful for the students who have support from the private sector through Whizdom Society by MQDC to develop education and quality of life through housing support for students of good behavior but lacking resources. I believe this activity will help support and create a good society for Thai youths as 'a community of smart and good-hearted young people'. The university considers that MQDC has a policy to support society in line with the vision of the university, which focuses on social contribution. In the future, SWU will be pleased to join other activities of the company that similarly help society."

Hashtag: #WhizdomSociety #WhizdomClub #InspirationHub #KnowledgeSharing

REPORT: Notre Dame reaches 85 scholarships with Ewell medical hardship

$
0
0

Let the annual summer parlor game end: Notre Dame has fallen to the NCAA maximum number of scholarships of 85. Per Eric Hansen of the South Bend Tribune 's ND Insider , Irish junior defensive tackle Darnell Ewell will take a medical hardship, remaining on scholarship at Notre Dame but no longer a member of the football program.

"He's had some issues relative to the stress of the game and academics and managing all that's going on," Irish head coach Brian Kelly told Hansen. "I can't get into the specifics of it. He's staying in school. He's going to get his degree."

A consensus four-star prospect out of Virginia, Ewell never appeared in a game for Notre Dame, instead flipping from defensive tackle to offensive guard in October and then back to defensive tackle this spring. A few weeks into that latest move, Kelly perhaps foreshadowed this present issue, acknowledging an injury had kept Ewell from making an impact through three weeks of spring practice.

"We moved Darnell back over there as a big, strong, physical kid, but he was slowed with an injury earlier in spring ball," Kelly said.

Ewell moving to a medical hardship eliminates any concern of the Irish roster reaching 85 scholarships by Labor Day, but otherwise it should have little effect. Ewell had not forced the coaching staff to consider playing him. To pull from his 99-to-2 entry ...

"Injuries would put Ewell on the field this season, but little else might do so. (Early-enrolled freshman Jacob) Lacey is firmly ahead of him, and that gap may expand before Labor Day. As (sophomore Ja'Mion) Franklin returns to health, he will also return to a spot above Ewell in the pecking order, just as he was a year ago upon first arriving at Notre Dame."

Abuja Church offers scholarships to indigent students

$
0
0

Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.

Kingdom Men's Network, the men's fellowship unit of House on the Rock Church, the Refuge, Abuja on Sunday offered scholarships to 10 indigent secondary and university students of the Church.

Fidel Pepple, Chairman of the Network said in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), that the scholarships were for a school session and that the beneficiaries were from eight different families in the church.

He said that the scholarship was a way of encouraging students who were exemplary in the teenage and youths sections of the church to perform better.

Pepple said that part of the selection process was the financial challenges faced by parents of the beneficiaries to further their education.

"Our intervention was to help ensure they continue with their academics and not drop out. We selected these 10 through a combined effort between the youth section and the network.

"The youth department did the selection and forwarded the names to us while we enforced the scholarship," he said.

Pepple said that after the one year academic sponsorship, a review of their performance would be carried out to assess the sustainability of the scheme.

One of the beneficiaries, Ofunne Ruth, a 300-level student of the University of Abuja, while expressing gratitude, said the scholarship was not expected by any of the beneficiaries.

"I am glad to be one of the beneficiaries as you always get rewarded for working in the House of God. Two days ago I heard rumours of the scholarship but I never imagined my name will be mentioned among the beneficiaries," she said.

Another beneficiary, Jemimah Hussaini, said she felt excited as the scholarship came as a surprise to her and that she was glad to be so honoured.

She said since her father died, her mother had battled financially to ensure she attended good schools.

"My mum is a civil servant and it has been a struggle for her, knowing her salary might not fend for our needs. So, it is really mind blowing relieving her of the stress for a whole academic session," she said.

Elizabeth Silas, mother to one of the beneficiaries, said she was excited about the offer to her daughter.

Silas said she had to struggle to pay off the balance of her daughter's school fees as examinations was about to commence in school.

"It is a very big relief to hear I no longer have to worry about my daughters next session school fees. This will give me room to save for other basic needs in the family," she said.

(By Kelechi Ogunleye - NAN)


University of North Texas to Offer $20,000 in Scholarships to Esports Varsity Players

$
0
0

A year after becoming the first public university to launch a collegiate esports program in Texas, the University of North Texas will become the first public university in the state to offer scholarships to current and upcoming students. Scholarships totaling $20,000 will be awarded to 25 to 30 students who will compete in the 2019-20 varsity season.

"Very quickly, and thanks to some incredible hard work and dedication, we knew that we had a few incredibly gifted and hardworking students on our own campus," Dylan Wray, UNT esports coordinator, wrote in an email to the Observer. "Scholarships will give us an edge to recruit and maintain top athletes at UNT, so that we remain a competitive leader in the collegiate scene."

Varsity tryouts for the 2019-20 season will take place online Aug. 2-16 for four varsity teams, which include Blizzard Entertainment's first-person shooter Overwatch, the card battle game Hearthstone, Riot Games' online battle arena League of Legends and Psyonix's car soccer game Rocket League.

Students will have to meet a few requirements before trying out for any of the four varsity teams. They must be enrolled full time for the 2019-20 semester, come to practice and events on the UNT Campus in Denton and meet an elite skill rank requirement.

"We are serious about esports," UNT vice president for student affairs Elizabeth With said in a news release. "We already have one of the best college teams in the nation, and we'd like to keep it that way."

"We already have one of the best college teams in the nation, and we'd like to keep it that way." - UNT's Elizabeth With

The program was granted funding from the student service fee committee, which is comprised of students representing various groups across campus. The committee had dozens of groups present and request funding.

"UNT's own student body saw the need, as we were encouraged to apply for school funding, and approved by the UNT Student Government Association," Wray says. "The funding also provided the opportunity to hire a graduate assistant to help coordinate the program."

Wray says he saw the overload that the students were taking. Between practice, vod reviews, solo improvement and official competitions, students were putting in 15 to 25 hours per week into their craft on top of their school and work obligations. The program still balanced all of this with an average student grade point average of 3.21.

"We feel that scholarships offer a way that we can reward them for their hard work and dedication to representing UNT in the best of their abilities and as a team," Wray says.

Tryouts for the 2020-21 semester have already been announced.

"We are proud of the program our athletes, staff members, casters and coaches have shaped on our campus," Wray says. "Their tenacity and teamwork allowed us to continue to push UNT esports to be the best that it can be, and I'm excited to see new students challenge themselves and rise to be a part of our Mean Green esport community here at UNT."

Former Garbage Child Worker Becomes Scholarship Recipient To University of Melbourne

$
0
0

Does your family background determine your future? There are some who seems to think so.

True, if your parents are rich, you probably stand a higher chance of succeeding. Like this dude here who dropped out from polytechnic and became a doctor.

But as my handsome colleague eloquently put it:

A pregnant woman was so annoyed at a noisy baby that she threw a pot of burning mala at the baby. At the worst part of this? She wasn't charged. Click on the image below to read about this shocking incident:

So in the end money prevails? Kinda, but not really. All money did was just gave him a lot more chances, but the one who still has to actually put in the effort to make it into the school, and then in work, is Ian himself.

Now, if you're not convinced, I don't blame you. After all, Ian (bachelor and doctor) doesn't paint a believable story about hard work (despite him working for it).

Here's one that'll make you gasp and bow down like BuffLord95 did when we bought spanking pink dumbbells into the office.

Meet Sophy Ron

This beautiful young lady is the valedictorian of her graduating batch at Trinity College.

For those (like me) who don't know this word, it means she's the top of her class. What more, she managed to score herself a full scholarship to the University of Melbourne.

And trust me.

It Wasn't Always Like This

This is Sophy Ron too. Or, should I say, past-Sophy Ron.

She is the girl who worked seven days at the garbage dump at Phnom Penh, breathing in noxious fumes to help feed the family.

Her meals consisted of discarded food she managed to salvage from the filth.

And before she turned 11, she did not attend a single day of school.

And Now?

She gave her graduation speech in fluent English in front of a crowd of students. Confidently and happily.

Sophy is a beneficiary of the Cambodian Children Fund which helps to deliver education, family support and community development programs to Cambodia's most impoverished communities.

But at the end of the day?

If she can do it, so can you.

I mean, there's no more excuse now, right? Money, connections, these are things that are good to have, yes, but not necessarily required for success.

So, to share my colleague's wise words once again:

If pi sai are like opportunities, you may be given a lot of pi sai to dig, but the one who has the fingers to actually dig out the pi sai is yourself.

You won't want to miss these most-read articles:

Goody Feed is looking for part-time writers and video editors! Our office is located at Bukit Batok and hours are flexible. Click here for more info about being a writer and here for more info about being a video editor!

Always bored during your commute to and fro work or school? Here's the best solution: download our app for new articles, Facebook videos and YouTube videos that are updated daily...and most importantly, exclusive contents that are only available in our app! It's your perfect companion for your daily commute!

Chengdu Polytechnic offer full scholarship for Penangites

$
0
0

GEORGE TOWN: Up to 50 Penangites can stand a chance to apply for a full scholarship to enrol in Chengdu Polytechnic, a college located in China's Sichuan province.

Founder and chief executive officer of Phoenix Asia Academy of Technology Kenneth Phoenix said that an annual tuition fee of RMB15,000 (RM9,050) and accommodation fee of RMB3,000 (RM1,810) would be covered by the college for those wishing to pursue their higher education in either Business, Information Technology (IT) or Tourism Management there.

Phoenix said the scholarship would be open to Malaysians of all races who have completed their Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) or Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) earlier in the last couple of years with priority given to Penangites.

"The college will also provide Mandarin training classes for non-Mandarin speakers, which is also included in the scholarship," he said in a press conference here today.

According to him, Phoenix Asia Academy would be in charge of managing the application process, where applicants could send their applications via email at admission@phoenixasia.org.

"For those who are interested to apply for the scholarship, they should include their SPM (or UEC) results, graduation certificate, identification card and a passport-size photo in their application," he said, adding that shortlisted applicants would go through a face-to-face interview.

Meanwhile, Penang Exco for Tourism, Arts, Culture and Heritage Yeoh Soon Hin said that the inaugural scholarship for Penangites by the polytechnic was part of a cooperative relations formed between Penang and Chengdu three years ago.

He said a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for tourism cooperation was signed between the state government and the Provincials of Chengdu in November 2016, followed by another MoU on cooperative relations between Penang Island City Council and Chengdu Municipality signed in December last year.

"These collaborations were warmly received by both parties as the starting point for more developments and exchanges between both parties. A number of similarities were shared by Penang and Chengdu, both our communities are proud believers in the quality of life in an invigorating environment," he said.

He added that for the past three years, over 50% of Chinese students studying in Penang were from Chengdu. - Bernama

Arkansas lottery scholarship on track for a record breaking year

$
0
0

In the last decade, The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery has helped fund more than half a million scholarships worth more than $965 million and they're ready to help fund more futures again this year.

The deadline to apply for the scholarships is coming soon and if there's ever been a year to apply, it's this one. They are on track to break records.

Over the last decade, these scholarships have helped thousands of students afford college and achieve their dreams. This story is especially true for Daveante Jones. He's been an Associate Attorney on the employment team at Wright, Lindsay and Jennings in Little Rock for the last two years.

He's fulfilling his dream every day he steps into his office. But, his dream of becoming a lawyer may not have been possible without receiving scholarships like the lottery's Arkansas Academic Challenge.

"Without scholarships it would have been very difficult for me to go to school and I would have had to pick up more jobs and more student loans," he said. "Scholarships were my main priority coming out of high school."

With the help of scholarships, he was able to invest more time in academics and less on financial worries. That investment is something Jones attributes to his ability to graduate Cum Laude from the University of Arkansas School of Law.

"It definitely made it way easier to get the opportunity to start my career and go as hard as I could without worrying about financial issues," he said.

Even now, with less student loan debt on his shoulders, he's able focus on what matters most.

"I'm able to worry more about my job and things like buying a home instead of spending all my money on student loans," said Jones.

Bishop Woosley, Director of the Arkansas Lottery, said the lottery hopes to make even more dreams come true this year as the scholarship program is on track to break records.

"We're having the best year we've ever had so far," said Woosley. "We're going to end up as good as we've ever been and could break our previous record or at least match it."

He said the number to beat is roughly $97.2 million dollars as thousands of students await the opportunity to receive financial assistance.

"I am always amazed at the gratitude of the families who get the scholarships," he said "They always say how thankful they are for them."

The deadline to apply has been extended to July 1st.

For more information on how to apply visit here.

“Foucault’s Pendulum”: Social Scholarship, Ideology, and Libertarian Temptations

$
0
0
I'm no prophet. My job is making windows where there were once walls. ― Michel Foucault

Martin Luther, a German Augustinian monk, is credited with triggering a profound spiritual movement in the minds of early modern Europeans. Luther, who was an extremely pious Catholic, eventually became a reluctant rebel by channeling the frustrations of the faithful over their inability to reach out directly to God within the then existing church matrix. The Protestant Reformation, which he helped unleash, developed in opposition to the powerful institutions and guidelines of the Roman Catholic Church that acted as a gatekeeper to the sacred knowledge. The reformation movement decentered and fragmented the once powerful Catholic ideology and bureaucracy, eventually shifting the minds of people toward the individual interpretation of Scripture.

In its condemnation of Luther, the papal court compared his heresy with that of Jan Hus. One hundred years prior to Luther, this religious dissenter from Bohemia had been burned at the stake for essentially advocating the same things that were later ushered in by the Protestants. Puzzled by the comparison, Luther, who had never heard about Hus, went to a library to research what the Bohemian had been up to. Stunned by the obvious similarities between Hus's and his own ideas, the rebellious German monk allegedly exclaimed, "Yes, I am a Hussite."[1] This historical anecdote was on my mind while I was following a recent debate about how and why, at the end of his life, Michel Foucault (1926-1984) - a 20 th-century philosophical giant of a French-Jewish extraction and, simultaneously, one of the intellectual gurus of the modern left - became interested in "neoliberalism."[2]

Foucault's intention to explore the ideas of individual liberty and free enterprise - the process which led him to discovering for himself the writings of modern libertarian and libertarian-leaning thinkers, particularly F. A. Hayek (1899-1992), Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), Wilhelm Röpke (1899-1966), Milton Freedman (1912-2006), and Gary Becker (1930-2014). As the intellectual historian James Miller has informed us, the outcome of those insights was that Foucault implicitly came to defend "the value of a libertarian kind of liberalism."[3]

By now, his works have become classics, and among many social scholars, it is considered a matter of good humanities taste to infuse academic writings with references to Foucault. It will not be an exaggeration to compare his intellectual standing and prestige to the one enjoyed earlier by such celebrities as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. By the end of the 1980s, in the eyes of some Western left academics, especially in North America, Foucault acquired a saint-like authority. "He's become sort of an untouchable figure within part of the radical left," as Belgian sociologist Daniel Zamora stressed in his interview with a rather telling title "Can We Criticize Foucault?"[4]

Yet, despite his impeccable scholarly and activist credentials, at some point, near the end of the 1970s, Foucault somehow caught a "neoliberal virus" (some of his critics saw this as a product of his inherent "anarchist bias"). The first signs of the "infection" emerged after 1975 when the philosopher began contemplating on the nature of his own and his friends' radical militancy: "How does one keep from being fascist, even (especially) when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant? How do we rid our speech, our acts, our hearts and our pleasures of fascism? How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behavior?"[5] As a result, according to Colin Gordon, who apprenticed closely with the master, the philosopher began distancing himself away from "the militant ideal of the time," which a few years later made him explore "the formidable capabilities of liberalism as a political rationality.[6] Eventually, sometime after 1978, both in his interviews and lectures delivered at College de France,[7]

Foucault started examining and challenging some 20 th-century conventional left orthodoxies, especially the veneration of the power of a benevolent welfare state that faced economic and social stagnation by the end of the last century. The philosopher suggested that democratic socialism failed to deliver a well-working political matrix and suggested his left-leaning audiences explore ideas of "neoliberalism" - free market and individual liberty notions that were gaining popularity in the 1970s and the 1980s. Foucault assumed that this emerging political mindset was worthy of attention and intellectual respect because it could offer a type of "governmentality" that developed and corrected itself through its own critique.[8] He never approached his toying with "politically incorrect" insights as some kind of an intellectual epiphany. In fact, more often than not, Foucault simply narrated and summarized for his students and acolytes what he was learning from the writings of West German Ordoliberals (Röpke), Austrians (Mises and Hayek), and Chicagoans (Friedman and Becker).

Still, the very fact that the prominent left philosopher was actively exploring those "forbidden" names and schools in front of leftist audiences (which were accustomed to operating within the comfortable and familiar Marx-Marcuse-Gramsci ideological matrix) was already a revolutionary act. Foucault literally stunned his acolytes on the left by suggesting that one could actually learn from such writers as Mises and Hayek, whom no self-respecting mainstream social scholar of the time would have ever engaged into an intellectual dialogue. Yet, not only did Foucault discuss these authors in his College de France lectures, but he also openly encouraged students to read them.[9] Speaking in broken English, François Ewald, one of his close students who was listening to those talks, later tried to explain the keen attention of his teacher to the libertarian economists, "The sole liberalism[10] for Foucault, the sole interesting liberalism is the liberalism practiced by economists and not by the theoreticians of the political or of the philosophical politics of liberalism. Why? Because Foucault gives to the economists a very specific status, that is, they are truth producers."[11]

One can speculate that, as a wayward Marxist, Foucault might have discovered it appealing to his taste how libertarians privileged the economic approach. Thus, he challenged his students to scrutinize activities of governmental bureaucracy in terms of supply and demand, in terms of efficiency, and to take into consideration the cost of intervention. Moreover, the philosopher stressed that the radical critique of authorities through the lenses of "critical theory" of market can become a potent political weapon against governmental bureaucracy - a trajectory of activism that has been traditionally scorned as right-wing. In an inverted Marxist manner, for Foucault, this "homo economics" approach made perfect sense because it could be expanded to scrutinizing rational and irrational behavior, culture, intellectual life, and politics, for essentially all human beings have had to deal with the allocation of available resources.[12] In a politically incorrect manner, he also challenged his audience to think about the often-spoken Third World underdevelopment, not only in terms of the established ideological cliché of neocolonialism, but also in terms of how particular cultures and societies invested (or did not invest) in the development of human capital: the quality of parental care, education, knowledge, and curiosity about outside world.

He found a "neoliberal" approach to an individual as an equivalent of an enterprise or an investment capital especially attractive. Furthermore, his generalizations about the potent intellectual and cultural sources of Western European economic advancement in the 1600s and the 1700s were strikingly out of touch with the rising ideological tide of anti-Western sentiments in North American and European social scholarship. Talking about the role of human capital, Foucault drew attention to what might have jump started Europe's economic development: "To what was this due? Was it due to the accumulation of physical capital? Historians are increasingly skeptical about this hypothesis. Was it not due precisely to the existence of an accumulation, an accelerated accumulation, of human capital?"[13] Moreover, comparing the welfare state in France and in the United States, Foucault suggested that, if placed on a grading scale of hegemony, the American state appeared less "disciplinarian" than the omnipotent bureaucracy erected in his native France.[14] To an average Western leftist academic, all those utterances surely appeared as scandalous attempts to exonerate the "ruthless" free market, Eurocentrism, neocolonialism, and the United States - the "eternal capitalist Satan" of progressive theology.

When his 1978-1979 College de France lectures were finally published in France in 2005 and then translated into English in 2008, a small debate emerged within and around Foucault scholarship about whether the grand master had slipped into capitalism or not, and if he did, to what extent. Two observers, one coming from the left and another from the right, could not avoid noticing that the whole controversy over Foucault's alleged neoliberalism looked like a fairly tribal attack on the philosopher who disrupted the tunnel vision of the traditional left. As such, it was an obvious attempt to posthumously "discipline" Foucault for his flirtations with the intellectual right.[15]

The most recent comprehensive insight into Foucault's "heretical" exercises has been made by Belgian sociologist Zamora and his American colleague historian Michael C. Behrent, who invited a group of Marxist and post-Marxist scholars to explore the issue. The result of their efforts became a volume titled Foucault and Neoliberalism. Their overall verdict was that the great left thinker indeed betrayed the cause and ended up joining the "dark forces" of neoliberalism.[16] Introducing their findings, Zamora stressed, "Foucault was highly attracted to economic liberalism: he saw in it the possibility of a form of governmentality that was much less normative and authoritarian than the socialist and communist left, which he saw as totally obsolete. He especially saw in neoliberalism a 'much less bureaucratic' and 'much less disciplinarian' form of politics than that offered by the postwar welfare state."[17]

To the traditional left, whose ethos had been shaped in the crucible of the marshal and statist 20th century, such a stance sounded like pure apostasy. Until recently, despite Foucault's deviation from the "correct" intellectual path, left academic writers frequently downplayed his "libertarian twists" as misunderstood episodes in the otherwise noble progressive career of an academic-activist. This is especially true regarding American academia, where, as Behrent informs us, there has been unwillingness to actually read what he was saying about neoliberalism. According to Zamora, "This blindness is surprising because even I was astonished by the indulgence Foucault showed toward neoliberalism when I delved into the texts. It's not only his Collège de France lectures, but also numerous articles and interviews, all of which are accessible."[18] It is clear that the revelations about the "dangerous" intellectual games the great left master played at the end of his life and the very conversation about his "heresy" worried the gatekeepers of the traditional leftist "temple." Thus, Doug Henwood from Nation magazine, who agreed to write a blurb for Foucault and Neoliberalism, felt the need to issue a warning to the faithful: "The anti-statist turn of much of the global left has disturbing but largely unexamined affinities with neoliberalism. Michel Foucault, for all his greatness, is a key figure in this turn."[19]

Like many other twentieth-century intellectuals who were raised within the matrix of traditional Marxist theology, in the 1960s, Foucault seemed to have originally been preoccupied with the quest for a new class-redeemer to fill the void created by the historical "apostasy" of the industrial working class (the proletariat in the Marxist jargon). Many on the left became frustrated with the labor they thought was "corrupted" by capitalism and lost its revolutionary potency. They now came to view it as a class that was unable to fulfill its historical mission of liberating humankind from capitalism. To instill a new life into the old eschatological prophecy of Marxism, the New Left began shopping around for other groups of oppressed "noble savages" to act as new revolutionary saviors - substitutes for the working class.

These were found first of all among third-world populations, women, people of "color" as well as among various transitional and marginal groups, such as students, gays, the mentally ill, and the homeless.[20] Incidentally, Foucault's seemingly bizarre brief flirt with 1978 Islamic revolutionaries in Iran, which he was later ashamed of, perfectly fit that attempt to pin point a new political force that was expected to redeem humankind from capitalist modernity. As left writers stressed themselves, romantic expectations of revolutionary potency from the "oppressed" third world and non-Western cultures in general heavily pervades many segments of the Western left.[21] Essentially, this is a rerun in a new "progressive" guise of the old Enlightenment and Romanticism myth of the noble savage.

When, in their turn, many of non-Western and gendered "wretched of the earth" did not live up to eschatological expectations of the left to serve as revolutionary icebreakers an gravediggers of "evil" capitalism, it was a logical step for such writers as Foucault to move further down the road toward the individual - the ultimate "revolutionary" redeemer of himself (or herself for that matter). In the background of this collapsing political eschatology, there was unfolding the above-mentioned tectonic shift in the world of ideas - the movement away from the teleology of traditional Marxism with its "science worship" to post-modern concern with the subjective and individual. Eventually, both in political life and in theory there was growing an intellectual realization that knowledge was not one-dimensional but plural.[22]

Tasting forbidden fruits of libertarian authors was part of that intellectual apostasy that was unfolding within the left "church." In the wake of communism's collapse and the eclipse of socialism in the West, on both sides of the Atlantic, a small school of thought emerged among the left that began tinkering with the ideas of Hayek and like-minded authors. It was clear that some on the left wanted to learn their twentieth-century lesson and were eager to reinvent themselves in the light of libertarian ideas. As Barry Stocker has informed us, the best definition for such intellectuals as Foucault would be left-libertarians.[23] French scholar Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, the first to devote a whole book to the explanation of Foucault's "reactionary" drift, stated that the left should follow Foucault's example and openly explore and embrace elements of "neoliberalism" in order to renew the left cause. Interestingly, de Lagasnerie accompanied his comments by appealing to the authority of "holy fathers"; thus, he pointed out that Karl Marx had prompted his flock to harness the ideals of the bourgeois revolution in order to win masses and to move further smoothly to the next stage - a socialist revolution.

Lagasnerie chastised his fellow leftists for a sectarian assumption that "neoliberalism" always served as an instrument of oppression, which made them automatically praise and endorse everything that neoliberalism stood against.[24] Being firmly on the left side of the political spectrum, political scientist Hanson has similarly noted that it was unwise to treat "neoliberalism" as some homogenous monstrosity. He found it silly to scrutinize the minds of such alleged heretics as Foucault, digging there for some traits of the Mont Perelin society. Instead, as Hanson reasonably suggested, it would make more sense to criticize forms and ways of governmental domination for what they were without invoking traditional leftist moral labeling of who was and who was not on the "dark side."[25]

Simon Griffiths, a left sociologist, who also sought to sincerely explore the writings of such "enemies" as Hayek, went even further, arguing that the era of state socialism could simply be a detour from the "natural course of events" - classical liberalism with its ideas of individual liberty and autonomy.[26] In this case, as he hinted, it could be the twentieth-century left who ended up on the "wrong" side of history. Leaving aside his questionable teleological thesis about the natural course of events, the phenomenon we call socialism (along with its wild and unruly brother named communism), indeed appears to be a world history episode that acquired its classical statist features in the crucible of the marshal twentieth century.

It is instructive to observe how, in the 1970s and the 1980s, academic celebrities of a lesser caliber than Foucault were similarly trying to step out of the Marxist intellectual "closet" and move toward methodological individualism, while still keeping one foot inside that closet. A good example is James Scott's Seeing Like a State (1989),[29] a dense text that nevertheless became very popular with a broad range of social scholars - a reflection of the shifting intellectual sentiments among the academic left toward the local and individual. Scott, a geographer by training and an anthropologist by his research life style, brought together case studies from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America to show how grand social engineering projects, which were orchestrated by bureaucratic elites, produced grand misery, starvation, and ecological disasters. His list of these failed schemes ranged from German forestry experiments in the 1770s to the notorious "cannibalistic" collectivization policies masterminded by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s and to the debacle of the relatively benign "vegetarian" village socialism in Tanzania in the 1970s.

Instead, in order to theoretically validate his liberty, spontaneity and local knowledge argument, he preferred to stay within the womb of the familiar sacred texts of Marxism, invoking the ghost of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919). Since the 1960s, for the New Left, she became one of the major intellectual sources to be used to channel the emerging libertarian ethos into left circles. In the first decade of the twentieth century, this cosmopolitan Marxist activist had vigorously attacked Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik elitism, especially his pet project of a vanguard party. As an antidote, she valorized the spontaneity of revolutionary grass roots. It was this particular line of thought that became relevant for the New Left. Obviously, it did not matter to Scott that both "libertarian" Luxemburg and authoritarian Lenin were members of the same creed and were in a complete agreement about an imminent apocalyptic battle against the "evil" capitalism. Their major disagreement was about better ways of combatting the forces of "darkness" on the road to the communist paradise. As such, the format of their socialist dispute was very much reminiscent of the Protestant debates, let's say, between Presbyterians and Congregationalists.

Yet, the most picturesque case of the "coming out" party was Feyerabend, a post-modernist philosopher of Foucault's caliber who was the author of the landmark tome Against Method (1975)[32] - a book that assailed grand positivistic theories and advocated the so-called epistemological anarchism. For some reason, Feyerabend chose to introduce his famous volume with extensive references to, and quotations from Vladimir Lenin's brochure "Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920).[33] Not only did he quote from Lenin, but he also found it necessary to highlight the enduring nature of the Bolshevik's "wisdom": "We also see how an individual, such as Lenin, who is not intimidated by traditional boundaries and whose thought is not tied to the ideology of a particular profession, can give useful advice to everyone, philosophers of science included."[34] In this particular brochure, Lenin, a militant Bolshevik, had taken on his more militant foreign comrades who had been itching to arm themselves and replicate the 1917 Bolshevik Communist coup. Pointing out that there had been no clearly defined blueprint to making a revolution, Lenin had encouraged his impatient comrades to be more creative. Particularly, he alerted them that there had been different ways to orchestrate a successful revolt against capitalism. The chief of the Bolsheviks suggested that, in order to win masses to their side, communist militants not gamble exclusively on violence, learning instead how to combine legal and illegal methods, including tedious and unromantic parliamentary work.

Amazingly, among all available and obviously more relevant authors, Feyerabend singled out this particular brochure as an introductory jumping ground to start his entire volume. Apparently, being a captive of "sacred" Marxist texts, the philosopher never even thought about how bizarre the whole situation appeared: in order to validate the post-modern sensibility about the dispersed nature of knowledge, the scholar referred to the guidebook for communist militants written by the early twentieth-century revolutionary who had been firmly convinced that Marxism had been the only correct way of explaining the surrounding world and society; the classic of Marxism-Leninism once famously uttered, "The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true!"

In his novel entitled Foucault Pendulum, Italian writer Umberto Eco[35] portrays three intellectuals who get together and participate in an occult game that they characteristically call the "Plan." The game is to jokingly "prove" that everything in our world is somehow connected and subjected to the control of some centralized secret society with medieval roots. The friends become so much obsessed with their "Plan" that they completely forget that the whole thing is just a game. Eventually, the project acquires a life of its own and gets out of control when, by chance, a group of conspiracy theorists learns about the "Plan" and takes it very seriously. The conspiracy buffs are convinced that the "planners" hold the keys to the ancient treasure of the Knights Templar. As a result, the major character named Casaubon has to hide away from a potential assassin in the Parisian Museum of Technology.

A large part of the novel deals with descriptions of flashbacks of agonizing past events that go through the mind of Casaubon while he is hiding in the museum. At some point, he escapes from the building and ends up in a countryside cabin, where he finds the diary of a deceased friend. The grand game nears its end when Casaubon learns from these notes that the whole project of the "Plan" might have been purposely set up by this friend who had been longing to rekindle a lost but memorable sense of authenticity he had experienced in his youth.

Eco, who was on friendly terms with Michel Foucault, insisted that his novel with such an occult setting had nothing to do with Foucault the philosopher. After all, the title of the novel is a direct reference to the device invented by 19th French physicist Leon Foucault who had wanted to demonstrate, via his pendulum, the rotation of the earth around the sun. Critics nevertheless did not buy this disclaimer, viewing it instead as a nicely-crafted literary prank of the great writer. As if to confirm their educated guess, the novel ends a day after Michele Foucault died.

Last, but not least, the name of the major character of the book alludes to a real historical personality, the fifteenth-century French philologist and theologian Isaac Casaubon who had been active in the intellectual life of Western Europe at the very end of the 1500s. Viewed as one of the most learned men of the time, on one important occasion, Casaubon had been invited to act as a referee in a heated debate between groups of Catholics and Protestants. In post-reformation Europe, which had still been saturated with religious intolerance and outright violence, each group of theologians expected him to side with their argument. Unfortunately, neither side could have foreseen that Casaubon actually had had his own way of reading the sacred books of church fathers, which, and I want to emphasize this, had deeply upset both Catholics and Protestants.

Endnotes:

, July 1st, 2015, [1] Ryan Reeves, "Setting the Stage,"Tabletalk Magazinehttp://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/setting-stage/, accessed 2/111/2016.

[2] In the current left discourse, the expression of "neoliberalism" is usually used to describe the rise of free market sentiments in the wake of the decline of socialism and with the first cracks in the welfare state in the 1970s and the 1980s. At the same time, it also serves as a catch-all term that has nothing to with the ideas of economic liberty. Thus, the left (and most recently some segments of the nationalist right) indiscriminately apply this definition not only to everything that is somehow related to free market, individual liberty, and austerity measures but also to the activism of monopolies, international financial institutions, and to the increase of warfare spending. In this discourse, under the rubric "neoliberalism" one may find domestic and foreign policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, crony capitalism, financial schemes of IMF and the Federal Reserve, and even hawkish ideology of American neoconservatives. An extreme example of the latter approach is Thom Hartman who currently works for Russian propaganda channel RT. He has insisted that the major drive for the 2003 American invasion of Iraq was an attempt to try free market ideas of F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand in a new Iraqi setting. Thom Hartmann, Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture (New York: Viking, 2009), 89.

[3] James Miller, "Foucault's Politics in Biographical Perspective,"Salmagundi 97 (Winter 1993): 40.

[5] Miller, "Foucault's Politics in Biographical Perspective," 40.

[6] Jacques Donzelot and Colin Gordon, "Governing Liberal Societies - the Foucault Effect in the English‐speaking World,"Foucault Studie s 5 (January 2008): 48‐62, 50

[7] Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics - Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-79 (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); idem: The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the College de France 1982-1983 (New York: Picador/Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

[8] Donzelot and Gordon, "Governing Liberal Societies," 49, 57.

[9] Miller, "Foucault's Politics in Biographical Perspective," 41.

[10] I need to remind here that in Europe the expression liberalism is used in its traditional meaning to describe what Americans usually call libertarianism.

[11] Gary Becker, François Ewald, and Bernard Harcourt, "American Neoliberalism & Michel Foucault's 1979 Birth of Biopolitics Lectures: A Conversation with Gary Becker, François Ewald, and Bernard Harcourt [2012]," 6. http://www3.law.columbia.edu/bharcourt/documents/becker-ewald.pdf. Later, Ewald went to work for government in an abortive attempt to reform the French Social Security system along free market lines. Michael C. Behrent, "Accidents Happen: François Ewald, the 'Antirevolutionary' Foucault, and the Intellectual Politics of the French Welfare State,"The Journal of Modern History, vol. 82 (September 2010), 585-625.

[12] Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 246-247.

[14] Michael C. Behrent, "The Strange Failure (and Peculiar Success) of Foucault's Projest," in Daniel Zamora and Michael C. Behrent, eds. Foucault and Neoliberalism (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015), 179.

[16] Zamora and Behrent, Foucault and Neoliberalism.

[17] Zamora, "Can We Criticize Foucault?"

[19] Zamora and Behrent, Foucault and Neoliberalism, blurb, front matter.

[20] Pauline Marie Rosenau, Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 161-162.

[21] Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seduction of Islamism ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 7.

[22] It is appropriate to stress here that before post-modernism entered the picture, Hayek had already spelled out this intellectual stance in his famous 1945 article "The Use of Knowledge in Society." F. A. Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society,"American Economic Review 35, No. 4 (1945): 519-30.

[24] Magnus Paulsen Hansen, "Foucault's Flirt? Neoliberalism, the Left and the Welfare State,"Foucault Studies 20 (December 2015): 291-306, 292, 297.

[26] John Meadowcraft, "Review of Simon Griffiths, Engaging Enemies: Hayek and the Left (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Little field, 2015),"Review of Austrian Economics, May 15, 2015, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11138-015-0313-0, accessed 1/14/2016.

[27] Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 216-217.

[29] James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989).

[30] Ibid., 256, 344, 381, 388, 427.

[31] Ibid., 8. For more on Scott downplaying his intellectual predecessors, see J. Bradford DeLong, "James Scott and Friedrich Hayek [2007]," http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/james-scott-and.html, accessed 9/9/2006.

[32] Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London and New York: Verso, [1975] 1993).

[33] V. I. Lenin, "'Left-Wing' Communism, An Infantile Disorder," in V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. 3 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1967). The particular Lenin's phrase that attracted the philosopher's attention is "History as a whole, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more multiform, more lively and ingenious than is imagined by even the best parties, the most conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes." Ibid., 401. Feyerabend stresses regarding this quoting, "Lenin is addressing parties and revolutionary vanguards rather than scientists and methodologists; the lesson, however, is the same." Feyerabend, Against Method, 9.

[35] Umberto Eco, Foucault Pendulum (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989).

Viewing all 8319 articles
Browse latest View live