The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville has announced its selection of five incoming freshmen for its Bodenhamer Fellowship, a program that has received a boost from its benefactor within the past year to increase the award’s value.
The 2013 Bodenhamer Fellows will begin studying at the Fayetteville campus this fall, said Kendall Curlee, a spokesman for UA’s Honors College.
These days, the fellowship provides a recipient $70,000 throughout four years of successful study or $87,500 if the student is enrolled in an undergraduate degree program that takes five years. Previously, the award paid $50,000over a four-year period and $62,500 for a five-year program.
It covers general costs such as tuition, fees, room and board, but also may be used for study abroad, travel to professional and educational conferences, undergraduate research projects and special equipment.
In order to be eligible to apply, a student must earn a minimum 3.8 high school grade-point average and must score 32 on the ACT test or 1400 on the SAT.
This year’s fellows include Emily Barber of Batesville, who aspires to be a teacher and has studied fiddle, classical violin, clarinet and piano; and Darby Guinn of Ruston, La., a performing arts enthusiast who grew up on the stage, has been a playwright and has performed aerial circus feats.
Two more fellows hail from Fayetteville. Mason Hollis constructed his first website while a fifth- grader and Rebecca McCann began with a love for repairing bikes and other mechanical devices and now wants to be an environmental engineer.
The other new addition to the Bodenhamer program is Blake Sanders of Hot Springs, who began a Coats for Kids drive while a high school sophomore that collected 300 coats during a three-year period while earning numerous academic honors at Lake Hamilton High School.
This is the first set of incoming freshmen to benefit from increased award money for the fellowships made possible by the program’s original benefactor, Lee Bodenhamer of Little Rock, Curlee noted Tuesday after the university announced the new group via a news release.
In August 2012, the university made a surprise announcement regarding the change during a dinner in which the then-fellows spent an evening with Bodenhamer and Chancellor G. David Gearhart.
Because Bodenhamer had made an extra, one-time gift of $390,000 to his fellowship for a three-year period, rising juniors and sophomores in the program learned they would see the value of their fellowships increase beginning in fall2013, along with the incoming freshman. Six seniors in the program at the time found out they wouldn’t be left out, and would see a boost during their final year of study, which began in fall 2012.
The bulk of the program boost will begin this fall and carry through the 2015-16 academic year, Curlee said.
Bodenhamer, acting as trustee for the Bodenhamer Foundation, first established the fellowship program in 1998, she said.
The Bodenhamer Fellowship didn’t become an endowed program until a year or two after 2002, when a $300 million gift to UA from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation issued a matching-program challenge to donors, university officials have said. Bodenhamer was among those who responded.
To date, 108 students have benefited from the Bodenhamer Fellowship. Last fall, the program welcomed six freshmen.
The Bodenhamer is one of four types of fellowships donors have provided, and which UA administers each year through its Honors College.
The other three programs are the Sturgis Fellowship, which is for students entering degree programs in UA’s J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences; the Boyer Fellowship, for degree programs in UA’s Sam M. Walton College of Business; and the Honors College Fellowship, which is funded by endowments established under the 2002 Walton family gift and, like the Bodenhamer Fellowship, is not tied to a particular degree program.
UA students who are part of Bodenhamer’s program fondly call Bodenhamer “Dr. B.” (He completed doctoral studies at Harvard after earning his undergraduate and master’s degrees at UA.)
“Dr. Bodenhamer goes out of his way to meet and follow the careers of his fellows to a degree that is unusual,” Curlee said.
Recently, fellows who presented their research at a poster event at the state Capitol sent her snapshots via social media of themselves posing with Bodenhamer. And she recalls attending a play at Theatre Squared in Fayetteville in which a UA alumnae and former fellow was appearing.
“I looked down the row, and there was Dr. Bodenhamer with his family,” Curlee recalled. “They’d come to see her perform in the play.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 05/29/2013