CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Each of five University of Illinois graduate students including four from the Urbana campus has been awarded a $9,000 FMC Graduate Fellowship for the 2002-2003 academic year.
The fellowship program, established in 1971 by the University of Illinois FMC Educational Fund, awards the honors annually to 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 2002-2003 recipients:
Marinell Davis of Chicago, who is pursuing a degree in veterinary medicine at the Urbana campus.
Paul Kawka of Cincinatti, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering at the Urbana campus.
Molly Moore of Federalsburg, Md., a masters student in mechanical engineering at the Urbana campus.
Kevin Verzal of Glen Ellyn, Ill., who is pursuing a master's in business administration and a master's in mechanical engineering at the Urbana campus.
Lin Dou of Chicago, who is pursuing a master's in business administration and a masters in accounting at the Chicago campus.
The winners were chosen by a three-person committee representing the FMC Corp., the University of Illinois and the University of Illinois Foundation.
The FMC Educational Fund was established as the Link-Belt Educational Fund in 1963 by a donation by University of Illinois 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 degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois in 1897, spent his entire career with the Link-Belt Co. in Chicago and chose to remain an anonymous donor to the educational fund until 1973, a year before his death.