MichaeI Strand, associate professor and department head of visual arts, has been awarded a prestigious Bush Fellowship for 2014. Strand was among 24 recipients announced March 4 by the Bush Foundation, based in St. Paul, Minn.
“This fellowship will provide the time, resources and community support to broaden my community focused, engaged practice to completely new sites, from rural North Dakota to Brazil,” Strand said. “Through this process I will be advancing my own knowledge base in complimentary disciplines; human system dynamics, folklore, public history, rhetoric and design – and from this I anticipate new levels of depth within the projects that I design and implement.”
Since 1965, about 2,200 people have received Bush Fellowships, which are designed for exceptional leaders who feel they can accomplish even more for their community with focused, intensive leadership development. A Bush Fellowship can last from 12 to 24 months, and funding ranges from $50,000 to $100,000.
“We are thrilled with our new class of Bush Fellows. It’s an extraordinary group of leaders who are already making a real difference in this region,” Bush Foundation president Jennifer Ford Reedy said in a news release from the organization. “We are excited to see what they will make of the opportunities that a Bush Fellowship offers and what it will help them accomplish for their communities.”
Lars Leafblad, the foundation’s leadership and engagement director, said, “We believe the future success of our region is tied to the success of these leaders. The Bush Foundation will continue to invest in encouraging people to think bigger and think differently about the impact they can have in their community.”
The foundation was established in 1953 by 3M executive Archibald Bush and his wife, Edyth. It works in communities across Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and the 23 Native nations in the same geographic area.
For additional information, visit www.bushfoundation.org/2014-bush-fellowships-awarded.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation’s top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.