Selected Professions Fellowships provide opportunities for women to pursue graduate and first-professional degrees in designated fields where women traditionally have been underrepresented and where the employment outlook and earnings potential are strong. Recipients must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
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Established in 1970 with a $25,000 grant from the Max C. Fleischmann Foundation, Selected Professions Fellowships originally focused on opening doors for women in the male-dominated fields of law and medicine. The focus has since expanded to include science and technology as the demand for a technologically skilled work force has grown without proportional representation by women.
Fellowships in architecture, computer and information sciences, engineering, and mathematics and statistics are currently available to women at various stages of their graduate training. To address the underrepresentation of women of color in promising professions and encourage cultural diversity in these areas, fellowships for business administration, law, and medicine have been available only to women of color since 1991.
A 1997–98 Selected Professions Fellowship allowed Angela Lindner to pursue her research in the face of discrimination and go on to support other women interested in the field of engineering. AAUW support helped Mariya Lazebnik, a 2007–08 Selected Professions Fellow, complete doctoral research on the use of electromagnetic energy at microwave frequencies for breast cancer detection and publish a paper that was selected as a finalist for the Roberts’ Prize. And a 2007-08 Selected Professions Fellowship helped Jane Chen complete her MBA at Stanford University, where she and fellow students designed a low-cost incubator for infants in developing countries and established a nonprofit organization to distribute the product.
The 2009-10 Selected Professions Fellows are meeting the challenge by researching and developing solar cell technologies; developing a novel, nonsurgical method of stabilizing damaged joints; improving the way health care organizations provide public health services for indigent populations; and engaging in research that aims to benefit nuclear proliferation monitoring.
AAUW thanks the following 2009 Selected Professions Fellowship panelists: Tiffany Sanders (MD), chair, medicine; Montré D. Carodine (VA), law; Michael Goodhart (MD), business; Esther Obonyo (FL), architecture; Jumoke Ladeji-Osias (MD), engineering, computer science, mathematics; J. Carmelo Interlando (CA), engineering, computer science, mathematics. Guest Panelist: Valerie Hassett.
