Creighton University Arts and Sciences senior Danae Mercer is the recipient of the 2009 Davies-Jackson Scholarship and is the only student in the United States to receive this award. The scholarship assists students who are first-generation college graduates. The award will fund her two-year postgraduate study at Cambridge University and provides tuition and fees including travel. She also receives a life and learning stipend.

Mercer has been the recipient of Creighton’s Presidential Mentoring scholarship for the past two years. This scholarship supports promising students who are planning to apply to prestigious national and international colleges or universities. She also writes for the University’s newspaper, The Creightonian, helps with the Model United Nations team, and works in the Student Activities Office and the Language Lab. This year she has also interned with US STRATCOM as a policy designer and researcher.

While at Cambridge, she will be studying sociology, psychology and political science. After the two years, she will be awarded the Cantab degree, which is often viewed as the equivalent of a master’s degree in the U.S.

The Davies-Jackson Scholarship was established in 1990 by an anonymous benefactor. It commemorates two Cambridge University faculty members who provided opportunities for the young man at St. John’s College. The scholarship traditionally goes to a student whose background closely resembles the donor’s: a first-generation undergraduate with limited financial resources, who has achieved significant intellectual growth through liberal arts studies at a less widely recognized U.S. college or university. Eligible institutions have undergraduate enrollments between 2,000 and 5,000 full-time-equivalent students, and educate a significant proportion of first-generation students.