CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Each of eight University of Illinois graduate students - including four from the Urbana campus - has been awarded a $9,000 FMC Technologies Inc. Fellowship for the 2009-2010 academic year.
The annual fellowship program, established in 1971, honors outstanding graduate students in business administration, economics, engineering, finance or related fields. FMC is a Chicago-based corporation that produces chemicals and machines for agriculture and industry.
The recipients from the Urbana campus are Ricardo Flores, of Mendoza, Argentina, who is pursuing a doctorate in business administration; Anne Hammond, of Lincolnshire, Ill., pursuing a master's degree in business administration; Michael Hutches, of Aurora, Ill., pursuing a master's degree in aerospace engineering; and Jeffrey Mason, of Geneseo, Ill., pursuing a master's degree in mechanical science and engineering.
The winners were chosen by a committee representing FMC, the U. of I. and the U. of I. Foundation.
The FMC Technologies Inc. Scholarship Fund, formerly called the FMC Educational Fund, was established as the Link-Belt Educational Fund in 1963 by U. of I. alumnus Bert A. Gayman, a Link-Belt executive. A few years later, Link-Belt merged into FMC Corp. Gayman, a Champaign native who earned a bachelor's in mechanical engineering in 1897, spent his entire career with the Link-Belt Co. in Chicago and was an anonymous donor to the educational fund until 1973, a year before his death. The fund provides more than $135,000 annually for undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships at Illinois.