CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Each of five University of Illinois graduate students -- including four from the Urbana-Champaign campus -- has been awarded a $7,500 FMC Graduate Fellowship for the 2000-01 academic year.
The fellowship program, established in 1971 by the UI's 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 2000-01 recipients:
Todd M. Cole of Sheffield, Ill., a doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering at the Urbana-Champaign campus.
Susan Lloyd of Los Angeles, a doctoral student in business administration at the Urbana-Champaign campus, winning for the second consecutive year.
Nora Madjar of Sofia, Bulgaria, a doctoral student in business administration at the Urbana-Champaign campus.
Nathan D. Rau of Red Bud, Ill., a master's candidate in civil engineering at the Urbana-Champaign campus.
Patricia Sanchez of Springfield, Ill., a master's candidate in business administration at the Springfield campus. The winners were chosen by a three-person committee representing the FMC Corp., the UI and the UI Foundation.
The FMC Educational Fund was established as the Link-Belt Educational Fund in 1963 by a donation by UI alumnus Bert A. Gayman, a Link-Belt executive. A few years later, Link-Belt merged into FMC Corp. Intended to provide education and research opportunities, the fund now provides more than $100,000 annually for undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships.
Gayman, a Champaign native who earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at UI 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.
