Junior Captures Elusive Beinecke Scholarship

Author: Campus Editor in Chief

Pascale LaFountain '04 was recently awarded the Beinecke Brothers Memorial Scholarship, a highly esteemed and competitive national award. The scholarship provides substantial financial awards to be used toward the graduate education of students who display "exceptional promise" in subjects related to the arts, humanities or social sciences. LaFountain will initially receive $2,000 at the end of her senior year, with an additional $30,000 will follow once she begins graduate school.
The Beinecke Scholarship Program was established in 1971 by the Board of Directors of the Sperry and Hutchinson Company, in memory of the father and two uncles of company president William Sperry Beinecke. It is an extremely competitive program: each year, only about 100 prestigious colleges and universities from around the country are invited to nominate one candidate. The student must be in his or her junior year and should display "superior standards of intellectual ability, scholastic achievement and personal promise." Demonstrated need for financial aid is an additional qualification. From the already academically impressive group of candidates created from this initial selection, only about 20 are chosen to receive a scholarship. This year, LaFountain was one of 23 applicants, along with students from such schools as Williams, Yale and Vassar, selected from a group of 87 nominees. She is only the fourth Middlebury student to win a Beinecke award in the last 15 years. The most recent selection of a Middlebury candidate, Kate E. Skonieczki '99, was in 1998.
Middlebury's selection committee, composed of Associate Professor of Classics Marc Witkin, Assistant Professor of Chinese Carrie Reed, Associate Professor of Political Science Mark Williams, and Director of Student Fellowships and Scholarships Arlinda Wickland, considered several candidates from the junior class. LaFountain was chosen as Middlebury's Beinecke applicant for this year after a process that involved an interview with the committee and the submission of an essay describing academic background and accomplishments, plans for graduate study and career aspirations. A German and French double major with a teacher education minor, LaFountain hopes to earn a Ph.D. in German and comparative literature at an institution such as the University of Michigan, with the eventual goal of beginning a teaching career.
LaFountain was excited and "honestly surprised" at having won the Beinecke, she said. "I was surprised that I was even the first selection on campus" to apply for the award. However, Reed, who also advised LaFountain on the revision of her essay for the application, expressed her confidence in her chances: "I was not at all surprised. I had a strong feeling at the interview that she had a good chance of being awarded the scholarship." Wickland similarly voiced her opinion that LaFountain seemed to be "a perfect candidate" to win. "Pascale demonstrates independence of thought, is academically accomplished, passionate about her area of study and articulate about her research interests. She is poised to pursue rigorous graduate [studies]."
Praise was echoed by Dr. Thomas Parkinson, director of the Beinecke Scholarship Program. A member of the scholarship's selection committee, he was impressed with LaFountain's "high degree of academic focus relative to most college juniors" displayed in her application. He added that LaFountain's credentials were impressive enough to stand out even in the initial evaluation of nominees, and she was one of the first to be selected to receive the award. According to Parkinson, in recent years "the quality of the nominees has increased and the competition has become very selective, so Pascale's selection is even more noteworthy."