Howard W. Clark Scholarship : Department of Biology : Indiana University Bloomington

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Howard W. Clark Scholarship

Alumni & Development

About the Clarks

Prudence L. Clark established the Clark Scholarship to honor her husband, Howard Walton Clark. He earned two degrees in Botany from IU, an AB in 1896 and an AM in 1902. They were married for 34 years. Howard was Curator of Ichthyology for the California Academy of Sciences at the time of his death in 1941. In establishing the award, Prudence advised that the scholarship be given to those students whose "young souls thirst for knowledge."

Howard W. Clark Scholarship

Ryan Kessens, 2013 Howard W. Clark Scholar

Ryan Kessens with the pumpkin he carved in homage to IU basketball player Christian Watford, who scored a last-minute shot to beat Kentucky on Dec. 10, 2011. Courtesy photo.

Ryan graduated this year with a B.S. in Biotechnology. He hails from a farm in southern Indiana and came to IU with an interest in agricultural biotechnology. In Roger Innes’s lab Ryan investigated the immune system of plants; research that is hoped will enable development of crop plants that are more resistant to disease. He participated in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Integrated Freshman Learning Experience (IFLE), an honors freshman biology program with a strong research component. Ryan was an Indiana University Founders Scholar; he received a Hutton Honors College Scholarship each year that he was at IU, a Summer Research Grant from the Honors Program, and a 4-year long IU Excellence Scholarship. He was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society in 2011. This is the second year in a row that Ryan received a Howard W. Clark Scholarship. He starts a Ph.D. program at the University of Wisconsin in the fall of 2013.