While more than a quarter of the nations collegiate students are minorities, the percentage of faculty members representing minority groups in Americas colleges is comparatively low. About five percent are African-American and two percent are Hispanic. A West VirginiaUniversity graduate student has received an award designed to improve these numbers.

Kom Kunyosying, a doctoral student in English in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, has received the prestigious Southern Regional Education Boards (SREB) Doctoral Scholars Award to support his Ph.D. studies.

A native of Martinsburg, Kunyosying has Asian ancestry. He earned a B.S. degree in economics from ShepherdCollege before coming to WVU three years ago. Initially, he entered the graduate program in economics, but he changed his mind and received an M.A. in English in May.

“Ideally, I would like to teach Asian-American literature at the college level and continue to do research,”Kunyosying said.

The SREB , the nations first compact for education, was founded in 1948 and has worked to improve every facet of education, from early childhood education through doctoral studies. The SREB Doctoral Scholars Program aims to encourage more students of minority backgrounds to pursue doctoral-level education and eventually become college and university faculty members.

“Im especially pleased that Kom has received this scholarship because he is the kind of person whose life demonstrates diversity; both by his ethnic background and through his willingness to participate in such diverse activities as literary scholarship, creative writing, and teaching, as well as most of the public events produced by the English Department and Eberly College,”said Tim Adams, chair and professor of the English.