Making the Difference
Royster Society of Fellows
Putting Carolina On A Par With Privates - And Then Some
By Hope Baptiste
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| Malinda Maynor Lowery |
Malinda Maynor Lowery could have gone to graduate school just about anywhere she chose. With degrees from Harvard and Stanford already to her credit as well as five years of producing award-winning documentaries, Lowery’s options were numerous and included a fellowship at Yale University.
Her keen interest in history and propensity for research led her to consider UNC’s renowned history program for her doctoral studies. The opportunity to return to her home state and the Lumbee Indian Tribe she belongs to didn’t hurt either. But it was the unique collaborative opportunities presented by the Royster Society of Fellows along with the chance to work with faculty whose interests so closely mirrored her own that convinced her Carolina was the right choice.
“It surprised me to learn about the Royster Society because I wasn’t expecting that kind of program at a publicly supported institution,” Lowery said. “The Royster Society was just as competitive [as Yale’s fellowship] and had the added bonus of an interdisciplinary focus, which is unfortunately rare in graduate school.”
That is often the case with graduate programs, and just the kind of perception that Dr. Thomas S. Royster Jr. and his wife Caroline H. Royster wanted to change when they established the fellowship endowment in 1996. Since that time and with the continued generosity of the Roysters and other private donors during Carolina First, the program has been widely successful and the number of fellowships has grown each year.
Carolina continues to compete fiercely for the best and brightest graduate students and then enable them to perform at their very best as they partner with faculty in research and teaching and prepare to lead in a world of growing complexity. For Lowery, being a Royster Fellow has shown her how truly transformative private philanthropy can be. “[Being a Royster Fellow] has enabled me to see better the specific benefits of supporting graduate education, in particular, and appreciate how difficult it is to raise funds for the support of graduate research,” she said.
At Harvard University, where Lowery is now an assistant professor in history, the graduate school has no permanent endowment and experiences significant difficulty finding funds each year to support its thousands of graduate students, Lowery said. “It’s graduate training that moves universities forward at every level,” she said. “It is gratifying to see that the Roysters and their fellow contributors recognized the importance of advancing graduate education and have chosen to invest in excellence today and in the future.”
Lowery also credits her experience as a Royster Fellow in preparing her for the rigors and rewards of becoming a junior faculty member at a huge research university. “The community of fellows helped me see beyond my own discipline into the wider academic world and helped me communicate more effectively with scholars from different backgrounds,” she said. “My experience in finding common ground among scholars from different fields has made my adjustment much easier.” Lowery is putting into practice what she learned through the Royster Society. She says she hopes to give other students with diverse interests and backgrounds the life-changing experience that she was afforded. “The Royster Society was one of the main reasons I decided to attend UNC,” she said. “During my time there, it was the thing that kept me going.”
Carolina First created 196 graduate fellowships over the course of the effort. Since that first contribution, the Royster Society has grown to provide support for more than 160 graduate students. More than 50 students benefit from the fellowship annually. For Lowery, the Royster Fellowship helped her launch what promises to be a brilliant future in academia.
When asked how she would define the importance of private giving to Carolina, Lowery replied, “I would define it by imagining its absence—without the generosity of the Roysters and people like them, we would have no future generation of university professors and researchers. Higher education itself would be in jeopardy.” With fellows like Lowery now at Carolina, the future looks bright, indeed.
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