Grad students win Ford fellowships

For the first time at UNM, two American Studies graduate students were awarded prestigious Ford Foundation predoctoral fellowships.

Gina Diaz and Melanie Yazzi are two of nearly 40 fellowship winners nationwide.

American Studies Department Chair Alex Lubin said it is a big accomplishment for the department and UNM.

“It’s evidence of UNM’s ability to recruit the best graduate students in the nation and our ability to mentor students so they’re competitive in national competitions,” he said. “I also think it’s evidence of the level of support that our department and the University can give minority graduate students in particular.”

The three-year fellowships pay $20,000 annually plus tuition support and provides the opportunity to attend the Conference of Ford Fellows, Lubin said.

Diaz and Yazzie entered the American Studies Ph.D. program in 2009. Diaz worked at the National Hispanic Cultural Center as a curator. There, she got the idea for her doctoral dissertation that the fellowship will fund, Lubin said.

“She has been very interested in studying the politics of museum display, especially from the perspective of Chicana feminist work,” he said. “That’s what she’s proposing to do her research on, in particular what it means when especially queer Chicana feminists display their work in museums.”

Yazzie has a master’s degree in American studies from Yale.
“She came here from Yale, and she’s doing work on Navajo cultural politics and looking at the ways Navajo culture participates in decolonization,” Lubin said.

Students who apply for the fellowship are evaluated by a panel of nationally recognized scholars and judged on more than academics.

Students must demonstrate academic achievement, be committed to teaching and research career at the college or university level, show promise of future achievement as scholars and teachers and are prepared to use diversity to enrich students’ education, according to the Ford Fellowship website.

UNM Faculty Senate president Richard Wood said Diaz and Yazzie should be proud.

“The best graduate students in the country compete for these awards,” he said. “That UNM doctoral students won two of those 40 awards is a phenomenal accomplishment — for them, for their families and communities and for UNM.”