Using technology and media to preach the Gospel and to provide hope to a world in need.
Two Students Receive UMCom Scholarships for 2004-05
The Stoody-West Fellowship and Leonard M. Perryman Scholarship are “outstanding opportunities” for students with a desire to pursue religion communications as a career, said Amelia Tucker-Shaw, resource consultant at United Methodist Communications. “These opportunities provide United Methodist Communications an avenue to help cultivate and support the education of future religion communicators to enhance the diversity of voices telling the stories of the church.”
Ileceia Avelar
Ilceia de Oliveira Avelar, a senior at United Methodist-related Rust College in Holly Springs, Miss., was named the winner of the Leonard M. Perryman Communications Scholarship for Ethnic Minority Students. The scholarship provides $2,500 to an ethnic minority junior or senior pursuing a career in journalism.
Avelar, a native Brazilian and member of the Central Methodist Church in Nilopis, Brazil, is a print journalism major at Rust College, and is active in church-related activities at the school and in the community. As a communicator, she hopes to use her skills to promote and enhance church services, particularly in the area of public relations.
She wants to help the church promote activities that benefit communities in various countries, including Brazil, she said in her scholarship application.
“The plight of the street children in Brazil needs to be improved, and the Methodist Church in the country is playing an active role to address the situation,” she said. “I would like to be the spokesperson for the church in programming the (church’s) mission ... in the communities regarding the problems of the poor.”
Kristin Knudson Harris
Kristin Knudson Harris, a graduate student at Iowa State University, received a $6,000 Stoody-West Fellowship. The Stoody-West Fellowship was named for the Rev. Arthur West of Lebanon, Ohio, and the late Rev. Ralph Stoody, who were staff executives of UMCom or a predecessor agency.
Harris is the director of communication services and resources for the United Methodist Church’s Iowa Annual Conference. She said Iowa State University’s interdisciplinary studies program has enabled her to combine many disciplines into one course of study, creating an independent degree program of journalism, mass communication, religious studies and speech communication.
She said she was led to Iowa State because the disciplines at other schools are combined “with a view toward ordained ministry.” Although she works for the United Methodist Church and has an undergraduate degree in religious studies and communication, “I do not feel called to professional ordained ministry,” she wrote in her fellowship application.
“I believe my area of expertise is that I am able to interpret the specialized language of ‘the Church’ in ways that people without formal religious background can understand,” she said. “As a result, individuals who are interested in developing a more complete understanding of faith and its integration into life are being excluded from the cultural conversation.”
She wants to help people have a basic understanding of society’s many religious traditions, she said.
Other Scholarship and Fellowship Recipients
2003 Leonard M. Perryman Communications Scholarship: Susanna Song
2002 Stoody-West Fellowship: Lilian Karambu Ringera (pdf)
1998 Judith L. Weidman Racial Ethnic Minority Fellowship: Larry Ray Hygh, Jr. (pdf)
