Professor Carrie Schroeder Wins Prestigious Humboldt Fellowship and NEH Grant
Awards and accolades keep rolling in for Dr. Carrie Schroeder, Associate Professor in the Religious & Classical Studies Department. She has recently been awarded a Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to spend the 2011-2012 academic year conducting research in Germany.
Dr. Schroeder has a book in progress based on her research of children in fourth- and fifth-century Christian ascetic and monastic environments. The Fellowship will enable her to build on her research at the Institute for Egyptology and Coptology at Göttingen University, Germany. Her work there will focus on the ancient monastery of Shenoute, founded around A.D. 350.
The Shenoute monastery in Egypt
Dr. Schroeder also received a stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), which will fund her research this summer until the Humboldt Fellowship begins in August.
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Dr. Carrie Schroeder at St. Antony's monastery near the Red Sea |
The Humboldt Fellowship is a highly competitive international program that boasts 44 Nobel Prize winners among its past recipients. The Foundation annually selects 2,000 researchers in all disciplines to study in Germany. In 2009, 70 Alexander von Humboldt Fellowships were awarded to scholars in the U.S., and only one of those was awarded in Theology.
Selections are made based on the quality of the applicant's proposed research project and professional profile. The Fellowship is open only to scholars within 12 years of earning their doctorate, so recipients must have a significant record of accomplishment within a relatively short amount of time after finishing school.
Some of the other honors bestowed on Dr. Schroeder in recent years testify to her significant achievements. She received the United Methodist Scholar/Teacher Award for Pacific for 2010, and was selected for the distinguished Graves Award in the humanities for 2010-2011. She has previously received other funding for her research, including Pacific's Eberhardt Research Fellowship and a grant from the American Academy of Religion.
Recipients of the Fellowship must have a host in Germany who will sponsor their application. Dr. Heike Behlmer, an internationally recognized scholar in Coptic Studies, who also works on gender issues, served as Dr. Schroeder's host. "Dr. Behlmer is working on a critical edition of some of the manuscripts I will be using in my research," said Dr. Schroeder. "So she is well-suited as a sponsor of my work."
The opportunity to spend a year in Germany will provide a memorable experience for the whole family. Dr. Schroeder's husband, Eric Johnson, who works for Tibco Software in Palo Alto, will telecommute from Germany with occasional trips back to California. Five-year-old Bradley will attend German kindergarten, and one-year-old Colson will be in daycare—both learning some German language along the way, of course!