UCSB Ph.D. Alum Overcomes Odds and Pays Back With History Grad Parent Award

Posted in Articles, Biography, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2012-08-14 18:48Z by Steven

UCSB Ph.D. Alum Overcomes Odds and Pays Back With History Grad Parent Award

UCSB GradPost
University of California, Santa Barbara
2012-07-20

Patricia Marroquin, Guest Editor-in-Chief

Dr. Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly believes strongly in paying back and paying forward. When she was a History Ph.D. student at UCSB just a few years ago, “graduate school was quite difficult for me. Not in terms of the intellectual rigors required but rather insofar as managing my life circumstances beyond school.” Pursuing a graduate degree is bound to be difficult when you are a disabled Navy veteran taking oral chemotherapy for a rare bone-marrow disease developed during Persian Gulf War duty; a single woman carrying a child in a high-risk pregnancy; and surviving an abusive past.

Financial awards she received from the History Department and History Associates, including a 2005 Donald Van Gelderen Memorial Fellowship, which recognizes nontraditional students who return to graduate study after pursuing career and family interests, allowed Ingrid to support her then-infant daughter, Grace.

“It was incredibly difficult to make ends meet while meeting my degree requirements,” she said. “However, earning my Ph.D. in History had become more than a mere personal goal. I realized that I was an example for other nontraditional students of color,” continued Ingrid, who is of African-American and Irish descent. “In fact, today African Americans still constitute only 1% of all graduate school students at UCSB.”…

…Ingrid, who is finishing the final edits on her forthcoming book, “By the Least Bit of Blood: The Allure of Blackness Among Mixed-Race Americans of African Descent, 1862-1935,” discusses her experiences as a teacher, student, parent, philanthropist, and role model…

Read the entire article here.

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