The Columbia Global Scholars Program (GSP) offers highly motivated students of diverse disciplines the opportunity to investigate issues from a global perspective.  Based at Columbia Global Centers | Europe in Paris (CGC|E), the program encourages students to delve into another society and culture as they pursue their own projects, test their own goals against other peoples’ educational and intellectual systems, and develop a range of research, language, and networking skills to help them in this innovative intellectual endeavor. The GSP curriculum is designed to enable students to conduct individual research projects during the spring and summer semesters of their junior year.  The program, the first of its kind at Columbia, takes place during the spring and summer semesters.  The GSP for academic year 2013 is now recruiting students.

*Interested students should attend an information session held on Thursday, April 26, 2012 at 4:30pm in Fayerweather 411.*

For more information, please see this fellowship link:
http://www.college.columbia.edu/students/fellowships/catalog/global-scho...

Eight Columbia University professors received Guggenheim Fellowships this on Friday, April 13, more than any other institution this year. Literature Humanities chair Christia Mercer and Contemporary Civilization chair Matthew Jones were among the professors to win the prestigious fellowships. Also hailing from Columbia are School of the Arts professors Timothy Donnelly and Benjamin Taylor, Mailman School of Public Health professor Jennifer Hirsch, music professors Alex Mincek and Kate Soper, and Journalism School professor Stephen Hall.

During the Guggenheim Fellowship, Professor Mercer will work on a book project, Platonisms in Early Modern Thought.  She will also continue to oversee a new book series, Oxford Philosophical Concepts. The main goal of the series is to offer accounts of key concepts in the history of philosophy (for example, matter, soul, evil, space, health, consciousness, sympathy, and self-knowledge). Professor Jones will use his fellowship to study the history of data mining, a technique for summarizing large sets of data via computer software. Both professors will be replaced by interim chairs next year.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded 181 fellowships this year to scholars, artists, and scientists in the United States and Canada. Guggenheim Fellows are appointed based on distinguished achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. The purpose of the Guggenheim Fellowship program is to help provide fellows with 6–12 months to work with as much creative freedom as possible. For more information, click here for the article in the Spectator.

The Columbia College Student Council's Academic Awards Committee announced this year's winners of the Mark Van Doren and Lionel Trilling awards.

The 51th annual Mark Van Doren Award, which honors a Columbia professor for his/her commitment to undergraduate instruction as well as for “humanity, devotion to truth and inspiring leadership,” will being presented to Christia Mercer, Gustave M. Berne Professor. Mercer earned a Ph.D. from the Princeton University in 1989 and specializes in Early Modern Philosophy, History of Platonism and History of Feminism. The award is named for Mark Van Doren '21 GSAS, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, novelist, literary critic and longtime Columbia faculty member with a reputation for pedagogical greatness.

The 37th annual Lionel Trilling Award will be presented to David B. Lurie '01 GSAS, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, for his book Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing. Lurie earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2001 and has been teaching at Columbia since 2009. The Trilling Award honors a book from the past year by a Columbia professor that best exhibits the standards of intellect and scholarship found in the work of longtime Columbia faculty member Lionel Trilling ’25, ’26 GSAS, ’38 GSAS, an author and renowned literary critic. 

Five more Columbia students and alumni have been awarded Fulbright Scholarships, bringing the school’s total count of winners of the international prize this year to seven.

Rithambara Ramachandran ’12 will teach English and conduct research on special education in India through the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Program. Sarah Brafman ’10 will teach English in Indonesia, also as a teaching assistant. David Kang ’09 will conduct research on the interaction between food, culture and society in South Korea at Seoul National University, and James Tyson ’12 will conduct research in India.

Gene Kogan ’08E also will conduct research in India.

According to the Fulbright website, the grants are designed to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries” by funding research, teaching and academic study abroad.

Emily Tamkin ’12 and Cristian Gonzalez ’10 were awarded Fulbright scholarships to research in Germany earlier in March.

Three Columbia College juniors are among the 282 winners of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships announced this week. Woo Chang Chung ’13, Adam Formica ’13 and Katharina Shaw ’13 each will receive up to $7,500 toward the cost of their tuition and other college fees from their senior years.

The scholarships, established by Congress in 1986 to honor Goldwater, aim to provide the U.S. with a continuing source of scientists, mathematicians and engineers by awarding scholarships to students who plan to pursue careers in these fields.

Chung, who is majoring in both mathematics and physics, plans to pursue a Ph.D. in physics and eventually teach at the university level and conduct research in condensed matter. Formica, a major in environmental science with a concentration in economics, plans to pursue a Ph.D. in ecosystem ecology and eventually teach at the university level; his research interests are arctic and alpine ecosystems. Shaw, who is majoring in biochemistry, intends to pursue a joint M.D./Ph.D. and eventually teach at the university level and conduct research in medicinal chemistry.

Columbia nominees are selected by a committee comprised of faculty from a variety of disciplines across the sciences, mathematics, and engineering.  According to Dean of Undergraduate Global Programs Michael Pippenger, “the Goldwater Foundation limits the number of candidates each institution can nominate to four, so the competition is quite keen even to become a nominee from Columbia.  We are very proud of this year’s winners.  They have already performed impressive research at an extremely high level, have in many cases co-authored papers and given presentations on their work.  We are thrilled at their success not just in this scholarship competition but in their chosen fields; they all have very bright futures ahead of them as research scientists of the highest caliber.”

Goldwater candidates are nominated by their colleges and universities and chosen on the basis of academic merit; the pool this year exceeded 1,100 candidates.