UAB Junior Logan Talbot Wins Prestigious Truman Scholarship

UAB junior Logan Talbot, 20, of Gadsden is one of 60 students across the nation named as a 2010 Harry S. Truman Scholar. The award is one of the most prestigious national fellowships given each year to students who demonstrate leadership abilities, a commitment to public service and the potential to succeed in graduate school.

March 30, 2010

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) junior Logan Talbot, 20, of Gadsden is one of 60 students across the nation named as a 2010 Harry S. Truman Scholar. The award is one of the most prestigious national fellowships given each year to students who demonstrate leadership abilities, a commitment to public service and the potential to succeed in graduate school.

"Receiving the Truman Scholarship is a great honor," said Talbot. "I had so many people who wrote letters of recommendation for me, helped me prepare for my interviews and really provided me with a network of support here at UAB."

Talbot is the seventh UAB student to win the Truman Scholarship and is one of only two Alabama college students to win the scholarship this year. The Truman scholarship is a $30,000 merit-based grant awarded to undergraduate students for graduate study. Recipients also receive assistance with career counseling, internship placement, graduate school admissions and professional development.


"To have our seventh Truman scholar is truly exciting for UAB," says UAB President Carol Garrison. "We are very proud of Logan and his accomplishment. I think this really demonstrates the caliber of students we have at UAB, the personal attention they receive from faculty mentors and the high-quality academic programs that we offer our students."

Talbot is a political science major and is pursuing a minor in Digital Community Studies. He is a student in the University Honors Program with an overall grade point average of 3.8. Talbot said he plans to enroll in law school after graduating from UAB and eventually work as a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights advocate. He is the son of Todd and Pam Talbot of Gadsden.

Talbot is a former senator with the UAB Undergraduate Student Government Association (USGA) and member of the University Honors Program Council. As a USGA senator, Talbot was instrumental in authoring and passing an amendment to include gender identity and expression in the USGA's nondiscrimination clause for student organizations, making UAB one of only a few universities in the South to provide protections for the transgender community, he said. Talbot also is chairman of the Gay-Straight Student Alliance at UAB.

Talbot was a research intern with the Difficult Dialogues Initiative at UAB. The Difficult Dialogues Initiative is a national program funded through the Ford Foundation that supports projects aimed at engaging students in open discussions on college campuses about difficult social and political topics.

As a part of the initiative, Talbot worked on a project at UAB titled "The Safe Zone Dialogues," which involved panel discussions during which LGBT students shared their personal stories and perspectives with other students on campus. The project included a research component that measured the ability and degree to which students felt comfortable discussing politicized issues and the impact that personal story telling has on tolerance for diversity on campus. Talbot said he hopes to use the research data to publish a paper on the topic.

"Logan Talbot is the ideal Truman Scholar," said UAB Professor Wendy Gunther-Canada, Ph.D., chairwoman of the UAB Department of Government. "He lives the principles of equality and liberty having experienced through his academic coursework at UAB and his student activism on campus a form of intellectual emancipation.

"He is an energized man with a public service mission and the circle of his influence continues to expand as he works with others to achieve social justice in our diverse community."

The Truman Scholarship Foundation named 176 finalists representing 122 colleges and universities nationwide this year. The finalists were selected from 576 applicants. The winners were announced March 30.

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 first scholarships were awarded during the 1977-1978 academic year. For more details on the Truman Scholarships go to www.truman.gov.

About UAB
Known for its innovative and interdisciplinary approach to education at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, UAB is an internationally renowned research university and academic medical center. Click here to learn more about applying to UAB.