Eight new graduate students joined the ranks of women celebrated as Barbour Scholars at the University of Michigan over the last century. This new cohort, hailing from Taiwan, China, Iran, and South Korea, represents the latest in a legacy of women from Asia who pursue exceptional scholarly achievement to build the academic strength and body of knowledge in their home countries.
Levi Barbour, a University regent in the early 1900s, met three female physicians in China and Japan who had studied medicine at U-M. Impressed with their work, and inspired to help other women pursue advanced degrees given a time and place where those opportunities were a rarity, he endowed the Barbour Scholarship so other deserving women from Asia could study at U-M.