Kemper Foundation finances student dreams

By Joy (May) Sherman

Three Anderson University students answered that question this summer when they received Kemper Fellowships that afforded them the chance to dream big. Juniors Douglas Beam, Adam ElNaggar and Jamie Erskine each received $1,500 to $3,000 Imagination Grants, enabling them to travel anywhere in the world for five weeks to work on a project they developed on their own.

The program, funded by a nearly $100,000 grant to the James S. Kemper Foundation, is an investment in future student leaders. Toward the end of the spring semester of their sophomore year, students were asked to draft proposals, designing projects of study related to their academic fields.

Anderson is one of eight colleges and universities to be included in this program; the others are Bluffton (Ohio), Bridgewater (Va.), Defiance (Ohio), Elmira (NY), Manchester (Ind.), McPherson (Kan.) and Northland (Wisc.). Of the 20 fellowships available, Anderson students garnered three.

Beam used his grant to pursue opportunities that supported his music education major and French minor. He traveled to Laval University in Quebec City, Canada, where he took classes in advanced French grammar and the modern novel. Though he was challenged by the Quebec accent, the immersion and intensive format improved his French lingual skills, fulfilling both his class requirements at AU and his passion for language study. With his remaining funds, he attended a Chopin Master Class at Indiana University with undergraduate and graduate students.

ElNaggar, a biochemistry major, split his grant between two opportunities. For a portion of the summer, he interned at a medical mission in Honduras by assisting in the dental clinic performing root canals and fillings and helping in the medical arena by applying dressings to wounds. When he returned, he worked with AU professor Dr. Kimberly Lyle-Ippolito conducting biomedical research on phosphofructokinase (PFK) gene regulation, which continued as an independent study project into the fall semester.

Erskine spent her summer in Costa Rica, volunteering at an orphanage and taking Spanish classes. As a nursing student, Erskine wanted to grasp the cultural differences between Costa Rica and the United States, to compare a socialized medical system against a privatized system, and to examine the facilities in a Third World country.

In October, Beam, ElNaggar and Erskine traveled to the University of Chicago to share papers, presentations and experiences with the 17 other Kemper Fellows.

“The Kemper Foundation has this philosophy that the best and brightest students from small universities are at the same caliber of those at any large university,” Beam adds. “It was humbling to meet with others who were so intelligent and had so much promise for leadership.”