Congratulations to EWU McNair Scholar Madelyn Brown! Brown has been selected to receive the Dean Jeffers W. Chertok Honored Student Award for the College of Social Sciences, History. This award is presented to exceptional students who have shown a commitment to their education by demonstrating outstanding academic achievement with a minimum of a 3.75 GPA in their previous four quarters and through leadership and service to the community.
Brown is a member of the Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society, the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society and the Native American Student Association at EWU. She also created an exhibit for the Joel E. Ferris Research Archives at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane. In high school, Brown volunteered at her local library as a member of their Teen Advisory Board, participated in clothing and food drives and volunteered with Northwest Harvest and the Seattle Homeless Coalition.
Beyond her exceptional community involvement, Brown is an amazing scholar. She is a senior at EWU pursuing a major in history with an emphasis on American Indian studies. In 2018, Brown was awarded the Gingolyx Village Government scholarship for academic excellence. As a McNair Scholar, Brown has committed to attaining her PhD. To prepare for this, she completed a summer research internship at EWU under the mentorship of Christina Torres García and PhD candidate SimHayKin S. Jack, an alum of the EWU McNair Scholars Program. Brown’s research focuses on traditional indigenous knowledge and its historical influence on ecological care techniques utilized by northwest tribal communities. She has published two articles in the Spokane Historical, a web and mobile platform for telling stories of Spokane and Eastern Washington and a project of the Public History program at Eastern Washington University. To read more about Brown and her research, check out her webpage on the McNair site.
Brown has been accepted into seven Master’s programs: the MA program in Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies at Trent University, the Master of History program at George Mason University, the American Indian Studies Master’s program at Arizona State University, the Master of History program at Western University in Canada, the Master of History program at Washington State University, the Master of History program at the University of Oregon and the Master of History program at Claremont Graduate University. She was offer funding at four of these universities and full funding in most cases. Brown plans to attend the University of Oregon in the fall of 2020.
In response to receiving this award, Brown said, “I would like to thank the history department and the EWU McNair Scholars Program for their encouragement, particularly Dr. Ann Le Bar, Dr. Christina Torres García, Dr. Nydia Martinez and Dr. Bill Youngs.”
McNair is so proud of Brown and all of her hard work. We know she will have a continued powerful impact on academia and in her communities as she pursues a graduate education and beyond!
