Charles Stansifer

 8/12/08

New fellowship funds graduate research in Central America

LAWRENCE — University of Kansas graduate students studying Central America will benefit from a $115,000 gift to KU Endowment from Charles Stansifer, professor emeritus of Latin American history.

The Stansifer Fellowship endowed fund will provide about $4,000 each year to a graduate student working on a thesis or dissertation about Central America. Fellowship recipients can be seeking degrees in any area of study.

“It’s very broad in terms of majors, but narrow in terms of the specific geographical area,” Stansifer said, noting the individual countries included are Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Belize.

KU graduate student James Herynk will receive the inaugural Stansifer Fellowship. He is a Ph.D. candidate in medical anthropology researching chronic nutritional anemia and its biological and cultural consequences in a Mayan village in Guatemala.

Awards such as these reflect KU’s world-class reputation for research in Central America, Herynk said. The funds will help him expand his study into the causes and experience of anemia, one of the leading illnesses in Guatemala.

“It also makes it possible to purchase the supplies needed to build a small one-room health clinic in the village where I work,” Herynk said. “It’s a sign of my appreciation for their cooperation and collaboration with this research.”

Elizabeth Kuznesof, director of Latin American Studies, said fellowships such as Stansifer’s are extremely important to graduate students, who are better able to complete long-term projects. Fellowships also are important to the Center of Latin American Studies.

“There is good evidence that funding is the most important issue in attracting good graduate students to a program,” Kuznesof said.

Stansifer, who retired from KU in 2005, said he wanted to create the fellowship now, while he has the opportunity to know who will benefit from it. “Sometimes people establish these fellowships and don’t live long enough to see the results,” he said.

He grew up in Kansas and never touched foot on Central American soil until after coming to KU in 1963. In the 1950s, Stansifer wrote his dissertation on E. George Squier, a U.S. diplomat, author and historian who served in Nicaragua in the 19th century.

Stansifer was the first professor in the United States to teach a course on the history of Central America. During his 42-year career at KU, he sponsored 16 doctoral students, 90 percent of whom wrote about Central America, and more than 50 students working on their masters’ theses, the majority on topics relating to Central America. Stansifer has traveled and researched extensively throughout Latin America and has received numerous awards and honors, including the Provost's Faculty International Leadership Award, and membership in the Academia de Geografia e Historia de Nicaragua.

The Stansifer fund is managed by KU Endowment, the independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fundraising and fund-management organization for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment is the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.

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