University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumna Jennifer Biser of Hallsboro has been awarded a $24,000 fellowship from the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation of Washington, D.C.
Biser, who earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Carolina last year, received one of 58 fellowships given in the foundation’s 17th annual national competition. The award supports study of American history by college graduates and teachers whose goal is to teach American history, American government and social studies in the nation’s secondary schools.
The fellowship also covers a four-week summer institute for the award recipients about the U.S. Constitution, to be at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in July 2009.
Biser is now enrolled in a 13-month master’s degree program in education at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. “I’m really excited to interact with the fellows from the 50 states next summer at Georgetown,” she said.
At Carolina, Biser was a 2006 intern at the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources in Raleigh. She won UNC’s 2007 Mary Turner Lane Award in women’s studies and the 2007 North Carolina Museum of History Student Essay Contest. She was inducted into the honor society Phi Beta Kappa.
Founded by Congress in 1986, the Madison Foundation is an independent establishment of the executive branch of the federal government. It is named in honor of the fourth president of the United States. For more information, see www.jamesmadison.gov.
One of last year’s fellowships went to 2007 UNC alumna Emily Bagley, who will begin teaching at Panther Creek High School in Raleigh this fall.
James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation Web site: www.jamesmadison.com
Note: Biser can be reached at (910) 840-2090, jennie.biser@gmail.com
Madison Foundation contact: Lewis Larsen, (202) 653-6111
News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589