By IANS
New York : Three Indian Americans are among the 65 students selected from across the US for this year’s $30,000 Truman scholarship.
Indra Narayan Sen of Georgetown University, North Carolina, Monica Mukerjee of Michigan State University, Michigan, and Malki Singh of George Mason University, Virginia, are among the 65 scholars who were selected from 585 candidates nominated by 280 US colleges and universities.
The scholars will be given their awards in a special ceremony at the Truman Library in Independence City, Missouri, May 20.
The candidates were selected by 18 independent panels on the basis of leadership potential, intellectual ability and the likelihood of ‘making a difference’.
The Truman Scholarship Foundation was established by the US Congress in 1975 as a memorial to the 33rd US president – Harry S. Truman. The foundation awards scholarships to college students to attend graduate school in preparation for careers in government and public service.
The activities of the foundation are supported by a special trust fund in the US treasury. There have been 2,545 Truman Scholars elected since the first awards were announced in 1977, according to information posted on the foundation’s website.
Indra Narayan Sen is a junior at Georgetown University, majoring in culture and politics. He has tutored prison inmates and served as co-president of the Asian American Student Association.
Monica Mukerjee is studying international relations and psychology with specialisations in political economy and gender studies. She works as an advocate for sexual assault survivors and aims at creating international development policies from a gendered perspective.
Malki Singh plans to practice medicine in under-served areas, focusing on AIDS and other “problems of living turned into medical illness”. She is the president of the American Society for Microbiology and has studied HIV/AIDS treatment in South Africa.