ASU communication graduate student honored with two fellowships

Sarah Jones, a doctoral candidate in ASU’s Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, is one of 100 women in the U.S. and Canada selected to receive a $15,000 Scholar Award from the P.E.O. Sisterhood. She was nominated by Herberger Professor Sarah J. Tracy in the Hugh Downs School. 

The P.E.O. Scholar Award was established in 1991 to provide substantial merit-based awards for women who are pursuing a doctoral-level degree at an accredited college or university. Scholar Award recipients are a select group of women chosen for their high level of academic achievement and potential for having a lasting, positive impact on society.

“I have been nominating our doctoral students for this award via my local chapter for 18 years,” said Tracy. “This is the first time one of our communication students has won it, and as far as we know, the first time any communication student has won the award. Most typically go to students in the hard sciences.”

The P.E.O. Sisterhood, founded in 1869 at Iowa Wesleyan College, is a philanthropic educational organization dedicated to supporting higher education for women. There are approximately 6,000 local chapters in the U.S. and Canada with nearly a quarter of a million active members.

“It’s an honor to be in the company of these women,” said Jones. “To me, receiving this award also speaks well of the social sciences, especially communication studies, by acknowledging our work as transformative and empirically relevant.”

Jones was also awarded ASU’s Graduate Completion Fellowship, a merit-based award supporting degree completion of outstanding graduate students enrolled in an immersion (on-campus) program in their last semester or year of graduate school.

Jones’ dissertation explores the material and symbolic dynamics of milk banking and milk sharing in the U.S., the process by which mothers who overproduce breast milk or experience infant loss donate to adoptive parents or parents with low supply or compromising medical conditions.