March 25, 2003
BIRMINGHAM, AL — University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) senior Lucy Jones, 21, has been named a 2003 Truman Scholar. Jones, a Huntsville native, is one of 76 students from 63 U.S. colleges and universities selected. The 76 Scholars were selected from among 635 candidates nominated by 305 colleges and universities. Winners were announced March 25.
Truman Foundation Executive Secretary Louis Blair, who took part in her Truman interview, noted: “Lucy Jones combines a superb record of academic achievement and community participation with a passion for improving governance. The Truman Foundation looks forward to supporting her future education and to seeing her become a change agent and a force for good in Alabama.”
“I’m very excited and privileged to represent UAB,” said Jones, a member of the UAB Honors Program. Jones is an English major with a concentration in professional writing and public discourse. She also carries a minor in philosophy of law. She is the daughter of Edwin and Mary Jones of Huntsville.
The scholarship provides up to $3,000 for the senior year and $27,000 for graduate study. Recipients must be U.S. citizens, have outstanding leadership potential and communication skills and be committed to careers in government or the not-for-profit sector.
Jones is a 2000 graduate of Virgil I. Grissom High School. After her graduation from UAB in May 2004, she plans to earn a Doctor of Jurisprudence and a master’s degree in public policy. She has not yet made a decision on which graduate school she will attend.
Jones has been involved in many activities on campus. She is a member of the Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform and organized a rally at UAB to support constitutional and tax reform. She founded the UAB Students for Higher Education Reform organization.
She won first place in the Southern Literary Festival competition and was named UAB Best Writer in her freshman year. She also has organized student fund-raising events for Children’s Hospital. In 2002 she participated in the Bryce Harlow Institute on Business and Government Affairs at Georgetown University.
“I’m especially grateful to Dr. Ada Long and Lia Rushton of the Honors Program for all their guidance and help,” Jones said. “Dr. Tennant McWilliams, dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, has also been very supportive and given me lots of help with networking.”
Long, director of the UAB Honors Program, said Jones is an activist in the classroom as well as the campus, the community, and the state.
“Her leadership is intellectual as well as social and political,” Long said. “In both writing and speaking, she is consistently superb, and she has strong ideas that she defends with tact but also with vehemence. She’s a fighter with extraordinary gifts of persuasion; people always want to have her on their side.”
McWilliams praised her work as a student organizer for the Higher Education Partnership, a statewide group of universities that advocate the vital nature of higher education in Alabama.
“I think that she has tremendous focus on helping her fellow human beings and she understands the way you do this in many cases is through public policy,” McWilliams said. “This is a person who is utterly consumed with making the public sector responsible and effective in dealing with the needs of the people. I’ve never met anyone like her. She’s a real person and a wonderful human being.”
Jones also is captain of the UAB Mock Trial Team and helped to recruit and organize the team. In November, she was named one of the 10 best attorneys out of a field of more than 180 at the American Mock Trial Association National Invitational Tournament at Middle Tennessee State University. In February she took a Best Attorney Award in the regional tournament of the American Mock Trial Association. This past weekend, she was named a Best Attorney at the association’s national tournament in St. Paul, Minn.
“Perhaps her greatest strengths are her passion and devotion to those causes she believes in,” said Jim Phillips, coach of the Mock Trial Team and director of the pre-law program at UAB. “Over the years I have coached many students who excelled in a particular skill. But Lucy is simply the one total student who can analyze, organize, speak on her feet, accept critique and occasional defeat, and who never, never quits. Her total commitment inspires everyone to do their absolute best."
Congress established the Truman Scholarship Foundation in 1975 as the federal memorial to the 33rd President. The Foundation awards scholarships for college students to attend graduate school in preparation for careers in government or elsewhere in public service. The activities of the Foundation are supported by a special trust fund in the US Treasury. There have been 2,253 Truman Scholars elected since the first awards were made in 1977. For more information on the Truman Scholarships go to www.truman.gov.