UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State third-year student Abby Mikalauskas is the University’s nominee for the 2022 Beinecke Scholarship, which recognizes students who plan to pursue research-based graduate degrees in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
Mikalauskas, of Perkasie and New Hope, Pennsylvania, is pursuing majors in art history, anthropology and French, as well as a double minor in classics and ancient Mediterranean studies and international and global studies.
She said her goal is to pursue a doctorate in art history and focus on the interchange between French colonists and Indigenous peoples during the contact period in the 16th and 17th centuries and how that interchange created a new material cultural aesthetic. She said she would love to one day become a professor.
The Beinecke Scholarship awards students $4,000 immediately prior to entering graduate school and an additional $30,000 while in graduate school.
“Getting the Beinecke Scholarship would not only be very rewarding on a personal level, but it would also be extremely beneficial in funding my graduate studies,” Mikalauskas said.
Last summer, Mikalauskas helped with an ongoing research study under Bliege Bird, professor of anthropology, where she focused on digitally categorizing different shrub and grass patterns/growth in Australia’s western desert. The study looked at how controlled burning practices of the Indigenous peoples of the region influenced the botanical growth of the area, and helped researchers better understand the relationship between Indigenous peoples and their landscape, she said.
“This project was my first glimpse and experience with formalized research and really gave me a sense for the type of commitment and attention needed for research,” Mikalauskas said. “It also helped me realize that research was something that I wanted to pursue in the future and professionally.”
“Abby’s knowledge of 18th- and 19th-century French art far surpasses that of most art history majors, and she knows how to craft a research problem in this field,” said Elizabeth Mansfield, professor of art history and head of the Department of Art History in the College of Arts and Architecture. “Her ambition to study the relationships between French and Indigenous North American visual and material cultures sets her apart from most students in that she clearly wants to advance art historical research in a new direction rather than merely follow in the footsteps of her professors.”
During her first year at Penn State, Mikalauskas was part of the Spark Program, which teaches students about high-impact educational experiences and fellowship opportunities such as the Beinecke Scholarship and provides students the tools to develop competitive fellowship applications.
The final list of Beinecke Scholars will be released in April.
About the Beinecke Scholarship
The Beinecke Scholarship Program began in 1971 at the behest of the board of directors at the Sperry and Hutchinson Company to honor Edwin, Frederick and Walter Beinecke, the three brothers who ran the company starting in the 1920s. Together they expanded the company and set its course to become a Fortune 500 operation by the 1970s.
Each year, the program awards up to 20 scholarships from among the nominees of about 135 colleges and universities, according to the program website. The selection committee weighs applicants’ intellectual ability through academic achievement and seeks college juniors who will be attending a research-focused master’s or doctoral program. Professional and clinical programs are not eligible. Applicants must demonstrate a history of receiving need-based financial aid during their undergraduate studies. Students must also be U.S. citizens or U.S. nationals from American Samoa or the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
Students receive $4,000 prior to entering graduate school and another $30,000 while attending school. There are no geographic restrictions to the scholarship. The award must be used within five years of graduation.
The last Penn State recipient of the scholarship was Chris Brendel, a communication arts and sciences major who earned the award in 2013, and who went on to pursue a doctorate in linguistics at the University of California Santa Barbara. Penn State student Michael Stahl earned the award in 2009. Stahl was a classics and Eastern Mediterranean studies major who went on to the University of Notre Dame for biblical studies.
The University can only nominate one student for the award, so students first must pass through an internal Penn State selection process facilitated by Undergraduate Research and Fellowships Mentoring (URFM). Interested students will need to first submit a complete application to URFM at urfm@psu.edu, approximately two months before the national deadline.
Undergraduate Research and Fellowships Mentoring is part of Penn State Office of Undergraduate Education.