Recipients

St. Andrew's Society Founder's Prize

The St. Andrew’s Society Founders’ Prize, established in honor of our Society’s 250 years of Tradition, Culture, Fraternity and Service and made possible by generous donations in the name of James & Mary Dawson and Donald Malcolm MacArthur, for an outstanding Scottish or Scottish-American scholar, is awarded in the amount of $7,500 to Ms. Kathryn A. Ailes.

From Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, Ms. Ailes is an alumna of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, from which she holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in both English and Dance. A Fulbright Scholar, she was awarded an MRes (Masters by Research) degree in English by the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Ms. Ailes is continuing at the University of Strathclyde, pursuing a PhD degree in English. She is an award-winning and published poet, active in the field of original performance poetry and has organized numerous poetry slams, conferences and symposia including Poetic Politics: Culture and the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, One Year On with the National Library of Scotland. She will be conducting her doctoral research into contemporary performance-based forms of poetry in Scotland; after which she looks forward to being in a position to continue to develop and support these live literary events, and to bring critical attention to the ways in which popular literary art forms have deep artistic merit in addition to their social and political functions.

For more about Ms. Ailes, please visit her blog: https://kathrynailes.wordpress.com/

The Donald Macleay Memorial Scottish Music Scholarship is awarded in the amount of $5,000 to Ms. Louise Bichan of Orphir, in the Orkney Islands of Scotland.

She received a diploma in Art Portfolio Presentation from Orkney College, and an honors degree in Visual Communications (Photography) from the august Glasgow School of Art. Having played all over the world and been featured on the BBC’s Hogmanay Live Show, Ms. Bichan is a remarkably talented Orcadian fiddler and violin scholar working toward her degree in Music Performance at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Visit www.louisebichan.co.uk/ to see Ms. Bichan's work and music.

The David Hunter Strother Memorial Scholarship is awarded in the amount of $5,000 to Mr. Brandon Brown of Burnbank, Hamilton, Scotland.

A budding sound engineer and a profoundly gifted guitarist, he is a recipient of the Dewar Arts Award, set up by the Scottish Government in memory of Scotland’s first First Minister, to support Scotland’s Brightest and Best. Mr. Brown was accepted into Boston’s Berklee College of Music at only 16 years of age, and is currently there working toward his Bachelor of Arts degree in Professional Music.

A St. Andrew’s Scholarship is awarded in the amount of $1,500 to Mr. Alexander F. Crawford of Manassas, Virginia.

Mr. Crawford is finishing his Ph.D. in Mediæval History at the University of Aberdeen. A graduate cum laude of Ave Maria University in Florida, and having achieved his MLitt (Master of Letters) degree in Mediæval and Early Modern History from the University of Aberdeen, Mr. Crawford is preparing for an academic career and is researching the period of the Scottish Wars of Independence, exploring how the evolving Anglo-Scottish relationship affected the formation of modern Scotland.

A St. Andrew’s Scholarship is awarded in the amount of $1,000 to Ms. Erin M. Park of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

She studied Gaelic through the University of the Highlands and Islands, earning a Certificate of Higher Education with Distinction. Ms. Park is now entering her senior year at the University of Glasgow where she is pursuing a Master of Arts Joint Honors Degree in the English Language and Gaelic Studies.