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Endowment supports Nation's First Doctoral Fellowship devoted to study of Life and Work of William Faulkner

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2003-04 Awards:

Dissertation Awards
Honors Awards
Travel Awards

Contributions

Thanks to a generous gift from alumnus Campbell McCool, The University of Mississippi will offer the country's only doctoral fellowship for scholars devoted to studying the life and work of William Faulkner.

McCool created the $100,000 Francis Bell McCool Endowment for Faulkner Dissertation Fellowship in memory of his mother.

"We chose to establish a Faulkner scholarship in the English department and the writing program because we truly believe it is one of the areas where Ole Miss has a growing national reputation and can go head-to-head with any university," said Campbell McCool.

The fellowship will be awarded biennially to a promising young Faulkner scholar chosen by a four-member committee, which includes McCool and English department Chair Joe Urgo.

"The McCool Fellowship will enable us to attract the most promising young Faulkner scholars to Oxford and advance this department's work toward being the epicenter of Faulkner studies in the world," said Urgo.

The first McCool fellowship was awarded to Taylor Hagood, a doctoral candidate in English from Ripley, Miss.

"I am very honored and humbled by this award, especially to be its inaugural recipient," said Hagood. "I am very thankful to the McCool family."

Hagood sees UM as the ideal place to study the Nobel laureate and his work. "Being in Oxford offers glimpses into Faulkner's world that no other place can afford. The materials in the Special Collections, the professors who are Faulkner experts, Rowan Oak, and, well, the ambiance of Oxford itself all contribute wonderfully to the experience of studying Faulkner's work," said Hagood.

Taylor Hagood will be the first of many UM graduate students to benefit from the McCools' extraordinary gift. "Ole Miss has been such a large part of both our lives," Campbell McCool said. "So it is a great honor to be able to give back to an institution that has given so much to our family."