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Scholarships and Fellowships

Student Stories

Marist is incredibly proud of all that our students have accomplished, including those who have earned impressive awards, scholarships, and fellowships. Below are some of Marist's more recent scholarship and fellowship recipients. Visit the archive to view all award recipients. 

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Shivani Patel '22 Awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Grant

Shivani Patel ’22 was selected as a 2022-2023 Fulbright U.S. student grant recipient, giving her an opportunity to study youth volunteerism within the palliative care sector in India. Palliative care is a form of preventative medicine that utilizes a holistic, individualized approach to improve the quality of life by relieving suffering.

Patel’s study will center on Kerala, on India’s southern coast, where the community-based palliative care model is unique in that it encourages youth engagement by exposing them to the challenge of care itself. She says her interest in researching youth involvement stems from the fact that youth are a dynamic population capable of being shaped and shaping the world.

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Lenni Joya '19 Awarded Payne Fellowship

Lenni Joya '19 was awarded the prestigious USAID Donald M. Payne International Development Graduate Fellowship. Joya was one of 15 recipients this year out of a total pool of 649 applicants. This achievement is singular, but all the more remarkable given Joya’s path in the U.S. and at Marist. He came to the United States as an undocumented minor from El Salvador in 2011; he was also a first-generation college student. Those life experiences provided a perspective that made him uniquely qualified to be a Payne Fellow.

Administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Payne Fellowship Program has fellows earning a master's degree in international development while participating in two USAID internships, ultimately serving five years abroad as part of the Foreign Service.

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Alyssa Nichols ’20 Awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Grant

Nichols received a Fulbright multi-country research grant which will take her to Bolivia and Peru. She is from East Northport, New York, and is a dual major in Spanish and mathematics.

Nichols has a strong and abiding commitment to helping the underserved. She is particularly interested in issues of domestic violence and how societal means of dealing with that challenge vary across countries—and that was the focus of her Fulbright grant proposal to Bolivia and Peru.

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Louis Higuera ’20 Awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Grant

Higuera was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship and will head to Lithuania. He is from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and is majoring in political science and philosophy. Drawn to Eastern Europe because of family history and personal connections (he spent summers working at a restaurant with Lithuanians in the U.S. on work visa programs), Higuera is looking forward to this next adventure.

Higuera is a perfect fit for the English Teaching Assistantship (ETA). In 2018 he participated in the Washington Semester Program at American University. During that semester in DC, Higuera worked as an academic enrichment intern with SOUL Programs, helping to initiate a new literacy program in elementary schools and created a curriculum for college readiness.

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Emma Dionne ’20 Awarded James Madison Memorial Fellowship

Emma Dionne ’20 was one of just 53 students selected nationwide for the prestigious James Madison Memorial Fellowship, the first Marist recipient since 2008.

Dionne credits the success of her application, in part, to the close relationships she has built in the Marist History Department, notably with O’Sullivan and Professors Robyn Rosen and Nicholas Marshall. “They have been encouraging me and pushing me to succeed from my very first classes with them. Their willingness to read my drafts and let me spend time in their offices has been one of the main reasons why I’ll miss Marist,” said Dionne.

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Mac Mugabo '21 Awarded Humanity in Action Fellowship

Mugabo, a double major in economics and political science with a minor in environmental policy, grew up in Rwanda, which suffered the devastating genocide against the Tutsis in the spring of 1994. About one million people were killed. Like most Rwandans, Mugabo’s family was impacted by the genocide: he lost relatives, and his parents were refugees for a time.

The annual Humanity in Action Fellowship brings together more than 150 Fellows in summer programs in Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, the United States and Bosnia and Herzegovina to discuss, learn, and research in international groups. Fellows meet leading experts and activists to study historical and contemporary cases of institutional violations of human and minority rights. Says Mugabo, “I was humbled to encounter the people I did. I felt privileged to work alongside others who shared my values and wanted to learn from my experiences.”

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Darriel McBride ’17 Awarded Awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Grant

Darriel McBride ’17, an English/writing major from the Bronx, NY, and a participant in the Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) at Marist, was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant to serve as an English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in South Africa. McBride is also a Gates Millenium Scholar. As a Humanity in Action Scholar, she spent a month in Atlanta, GA, with other students from the United States and Europe, exploring issues of justice for underrepresented populations. After graduation, she pursued New York University’s master’s program in international education.

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Croix James Laconsay ’16 Awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Grant

Croix James Laconsay ’16 received a grant to pursue research on chemical bonds with Dr. Sason Shaik at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Born in San Francisco and raised in Hawaii, Laconsay majored in both chemistry and philosophy, with a minor in mathematics. He was also a recipient of the Dr. J. Richard LaPietra Sponsored Student Research Fund to Enhance Excellence in Chemistry Studies, a member of the Deans’ Circle, and participated in a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates at Texas A&M University in the summer of 2015. Outside of the lab, Laconsay was active in Marist’s Department of Spiritual Life and Service (formerly Campus Ministry) as a member of its Advisory Board, served as vice president of membership for Marist’s Toastmasters International, and participated in Marist Ambassadors for two years.

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Jaquan Jacob Arzu ’16 Awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Grant

Jaquan Jacob Arzu ’16 wasawarded the grant to Italy to pursue an MPA at SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan. A native of the Bronx, NY, Arzu was enrolled at Marist through the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), majoring in political science with concentrations in both public affairs and international studies. He was also active in the Marist College Student Government Association, the Zeta Psi Fraternity, and the Black Student Union. Arzu has been involved in community grassroots movements from an early age, working with the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and the national organization Dignity in Schools when he was in high school. He interned with Dutchess County Legislator Francena Amparo in 2013 and served as a congressional Hispanic Caucus intern in the office of Rep. José Serrano in the summer preceding his senior year.

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