 |
 |  | 2007-08 Summary
Total fellowships = 26
Eligible applicants = 71
Women of color = 50%
Total awards = $350,000 |  |  | |
| 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. |  | |
SEARCH FOR RECIPIENTS
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 shifted to 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.
Antonia Hernández, who received a Selected Professions Fellowship in 1973 to support her final year of law school, served as president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Ray Kinoshita, a 1987 Selected Professions Fellow, and Ann Wills Marshall designed the monument to the women's movement in Seneca Falls, New York, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and four other women held the first Women's Rights Convention in the United States in 1848.
The 2007-08 Selected Professions Fellows are meeting the fellowship challenge by designing affordable and environmentally-sustainable housing, working to strengthen the international nonprofit sector, and conducting research to help improve access to health care among minorities.
The AAUW Educational Foundation thanks the following 2007-08 Selected Professions Fellowship panelists: Alaina King Benford (TX), chair, law; Montré D. Carodine (VA), law; Suzanne E. Franks (PA), engineering, computer science, mathematics; Michele Hamilton (MD), engineering, computer science, mathematics; Valerie J. Hassett (VA), architecture; Susan Hesser (VA), business administration; , business administration; Sheryl L. Kolasinski (DC), architecture; Jumoke Ladeji-Osias (MD), engineering, computer science, mathematics; Kathy Lu (VA), engineering, computer science, mathematics; and Tiffany Sanders (MD), medicine.
