Undergraduate Academic Affairs

April 21, 2009

UW undergraduate selected for esteemed Beinecke Scholarship

Undergraduate Academic Affairs

Beinecke Scholar

Congratulations Luke Caldwell, 2009 Beinecke Scholar!Photo by Somer Kreisman

UW undergraduate Luke Caldwell was recently selected for the Beinecke Scholarship, a major national scholarship that provides juniors with $34,000 for graduate studies in the arts, humanities, and social science fields. A selected group of universities participates in this competition and each nominates one student per year. Caldwell is one of 21 students from a pool of 107 nominees.

Beinecke Scholarships are awarded to students based on their intellectual ability, scholastic achievement, personal promise, and financial need. Applicants are expected to have well-formulated ideas about the direction of their studies and their future careers.

Luke Caldwell, Junior, Beinecke Scholar
Majors: Comparative History of Ideas, History
Minors: Human Rights
Hometown: Seattle, WA
Phi Beta Kappa member, Tillicums scholarship, Dean’s List

Caldwell has experience as a peer facilitator for the comparative history of ideas course “The Question of Human Nature” and as a peer tutor for the Center for Learning and Undergraduate Enrichment (CLUE). He has researched and written about the Washington state eugenics movement and institutional history of Western State Hospital and is interested in poststructuralist philosophy, complexity theory, anthropology, and modernist literature. He enjoys a wide range of activities including reading philosophy, science, anthropology, and modernist literature, writing and recording experimental and electronic music, writing poetry, biking, skiing, weight lifting, board games, chess, and cards. After graduation, Caldwell plans to attend graduate school and would eventually like to teach at the university level.

About the Office of Merit Scholarships, Fellowships, and Awards
The Office of Merit Scholarships, Fellowships and Awards helps UW undergraduates develop the tools and personal insights necessary to match their goals with local and national merit-based scholarship opportunities. National scholarship opportunities include the Fulbright, Goldwater, Marshall, Rhodes, Truman scholarships and many others. The office is part of the Center for Experiential Learning in Undergraduate Academic Affairs.

About the Beinecke Scholarship Program
The Beinecke Scholarship Program was established in 1971 by the Board of Directors of The Sperry and Hutchinson Company to honor Edwin, Frederick, and Walter Beinecke. The Board created an endowment to provide substantial scholarships for the graduate education of young men and women of exceptional promise.

The program seeks to encourage and enable highly motivated students to pursue opportunities available to them and to be courageous in the selection of a graduated course of study. Since 1975 the program has selected more than 430 college juniors from 100 different undergraduate institutions for support during graduate study at any accredited university.