A former U.S. Interior and State Department intern, who spent two years in two African nations during her Peace Corps service from 2011–2013, has been awarded a prestigious Peace Corps Coverdell Fellowship to study at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law.
Grace Magruder will receive a $3,000 annual grant to study at the law school. This new partnership is the first between a university in Hawaiʻi and the Peace Corps, and is one of only a handful of law-related Coverdell Fellowships in the United States.
As a small business volunteer, Magruder sought to promote cultural exchange through food security and ecotourism projects on the island nation of Cape Verde, off the West African coast. In her second year, she served in the nation of Togo where she worked with a cooperative of local artisans, including an organic coffee farmer and fabric/clothing designer helping to strengthen quality control, design and marketing of their unique products to local and international consumers.
Empowering economic development in communities
Magruder has long been fascinated by the potential for culture as a way to empower economic development of communities. She had originally intended to come to UH in 2006 as an ethnobotany major, but she chose to stay closer to home and ended up at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
At the time she was researching the noni fruit, which had become a commodity crop in the Pacific. Fascinated by the broader economic, social and cultural implications of niche product markets, she switched her major from botany to political science during her sophomore year.
“My interest in the Pacific began after studying ethnobotany in high school and how niche products like the noni fruit can help build economic capacity and strengthen cultural exchange,” said Magruder. “But it was the Peace Corps that opened my eyes to the broader community of small-island developing states across the Pacific, Caribbean and Africa and the similar challenges that they all face, especially today in light of globalization and the effects of climate change.”
Creating more educational partnerships
Magruder moved half-way around the world for a second time to join the law school’s 2014 entering class. She now attends school part-time while working as the Peace Corps recruiter for UH Mānoa. In this role, she intends to create more educational partnerships between the Peace Corps and Hawaiʻi, a state that already has a proud legacy as a former Peace Corps training site and home to many returned Peace Corps volunteers.
Said Magruder, “The Pacific will be of growing importance to U.S. foreign policy in the coming years and I feel a pull to go back to my own community and educate our government officials about the importance of the Pacific and the long legacy of U.S. foreign policy decisions there—whether it is military build-up on Guam, sea level rise in Kiribati, or the Compact of Free Association with the people of Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.”
Said law school Dean Avi Soifer, “We are grateful to Grace and very enthusiastic about the Coverdell Fellowship, which will continue to bring us top-notch students like her who will bring their fresh ideas to our community. Their global experience combined with local commitment neatly reinforces core values of our law school.”
For the full story, visit the William S. Richardson School of Law website.
—By Beverly Creamer
