Sherry Miller Melecki Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Social Work
Sherry Melecki interacts daily with doctoral students through her job as graduate program coordinator at the Steve Hicks School. Since 2008, when she started, she has helped shepherd 94 doctoral students towards graduation.
“It is exciting to see the students come in, so full of ideas and energy. They go through several developmental processes as PhD students—like asking themselves ‘what have I done!’ in the first semester or having impostor syndrome— and I find a lot of satisfaction in being there for them.”
Melecki always knew that she wanted to leave something that stayed beyond her time on Earth, but she was not sure what shape it would take. This past December, when she was making her yearly donation to the school, she realized that the Steve Hicks Matching Challenge was still open.
“I thought, this is what I should do!” Melecki said, of her wish to establish an endowment to benefit doctoral students. “I was on break and could not wait to come back in January, because I was ready to get this done.”