KU names 21 students for prestigious Self Memorial Scholarship

Twenty-one University of Kansas seniors will head into graduate school this fall with a scholarship package designed to do more than help pay tuition. Each of the 2026-27 Self Memorial Scholars will receive a $10,000 award, a $1,000 professional development grant and access to KU’s Scholar Development Program, part of a pipeline aimed at building the next generation of leaders in Lawrence and beyond.

The scholarship is reserved for KU seniors entering their first year of a master’s or doctoral program at KU in fall 2026. KU said the program rewards leadership, scholarship and the potential to make a lasting impact, while placing scholars in an interdisciplinary cohort that brings together students from across campus. This year’s class is slightly larger than last year’s group of 20, continuing a steady annual expansion of one of the university’s most selective graduate-support programs.

For Douglas County readers, the significance reaches beyond campus prestige. KU said the scholars will be trained through a program that emphasizes career development, communication and leadership, the kind of preparation that can shape the local workforce, research culture and civic leadership pool that Lawrence relies on. The new cohort includes students preparing for fields that range from accounting and civil engineering to economics, biomedical sciences, speech-language pathology, business analytics and digital marketing communications.

Among the scholars named by KU are Daniel A. Rivera, Sean Anderson, Dominic Arbini, Brett Cranor, Kendall Cranor, Brooklyn Dickey, Kundana Dongala and Taylor Doyle. KU also said students in the group come from Kansas communities including Manhattan, Overland Park and Shawnee, along with Fenton, Missouri, and Cambridge, Minnesota, underscoring the geographic reach of the university’s graduate pipeline while keeping part of that talent rooted in Kansas.

The Self Memorial Scholarship grew out of a longer effort by Madison and Lila Self to back graduate education. KU said the Selfs began supporting graduate students in 1989 with the Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellowship. The memorial scholarship was launched and permanently endowed in 2014, the first scholars were named in 2018, and the program has since supported nearly 130 graduate students. It became part of Self Graduate Programs in 2019.

KU describes that broader mission as identifying, recruiting and developing students who can contribute significantly to their fields and to society. In Lawrence, that means more than an academic honor. It means KU is investing in people who are likely to become the researchers, professionals and public leaders shaping Kansas’s future.