About the Office of Nationally Competitive Awards
The Office of Nationally Competitive Awards provides fellowship and grant information to undergraduates university-wide. We will also assist you in assembling the best application possible.
Suzanne McCray
Suzanne McCray serves as the Vice Provost for Enrollment Management and the Dean of Admissions. She is also the Director of the Office of Nationally Competitive Awards. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Arkansas in 1974, graduating with high honors. She was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, and now serves as the University of Arkansas’ PBK chapter secretary. In 1985-1986, McCray served as a co-director of the Anglo-American Library at the University of Cluj in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In 1990 she received a doctorate in English from the University of Tennessee (1990).
McCray’s professional career at the University of Arkansas began in 1990 with the Honors Studies Program in Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. In 2002 with the creation of the Honors College, she became its Associate Dean. Her responsibilities include oversight of the Academic Scholarship Office, the Advanced Placement Summer Institute, and the Office of Post-Graduate Fellowships. She has advised hundreds of students about scholarship and graduate school applications including thirty-three Barry Goldwater Scholars, seven Truman Scholars, three Marshall Scholars, one Rhodes Scholar, five Morris Udall Scholars and numerous James Madison Scholars, National Science Foundation Fellows, NFS summer interns, Rotary Scholars, Fulbright Scholars and others. The advising support for the Rhodes Scholarship given at the University Arkansas and at Harvard was profiled in Mike Winerip’s New York Times article “The Fellowship of the Rhodes,” January 12, 2003. She works actively with honors directors in the various honors programs to coordinated and develop honors activities, and she also teaches H2P and honors colloquia on contemporary Southern literature.
She has been an active member of the National Association of Fellowships Advisors, serving as its president from 2003-2005. She has served on the planning committees for three conferences held in the UK focusing on scholarship and education opportunities (including the Rhodes, Marshall, and Gates Cambridge scholarships) for students in the US, working with foundation and universities across the country and has served on the planning committee for three NAFA conference held in the US as well. She recently published Beyond Winning: National Scholarship Competitions and the Student Experience, University of Arkansas Press, 2005.