Ensley awarded Phi Kappa Phi Fellowship
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Kyle Ensley of Valliant, a senior at Oklahoma State University, is one of 60 students
in the nation to receive a $5,000 Phi Kappa Phi Fellowship Award for 2009.
Ensley, who will receive two OSU degrees in May--an Honors College Degree in international business and a political science degree--will use the fellowship to attend the Harvard Kennedy School of Government beginning this fall.
This fellowship is awarded on a competitive basis for first-year graduate or professional study. Each chapter of Phi Kappa Phi may nominate one student each year for the national competition, and all national nominees also receive a one-year active membership in Phi Kappa Phi.
"Receiving the National Phi Kappa Phi Fellowship is a great honor, and I'm very thankful to receive the award and represent OSU on the national level," Ensley said.
The fellowship will provide partial funding for his graduate school education. Starting in the fall, Ensley will be pursuing a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University, and he expects to graduate from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2011.
Following his graduation from OSU in May, he will intern in the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., before starting graduate study. Following his graduation from Harvard, he plans to take a position as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State working in the public diplomacy field.
Ensley has been named an Outstanding Senior by the OSU Alumni Association, 2009 Greek Man of the Year, received a 2007 Thomas R. Pickering Scholarship and a National Public Policy International Affairs Scholarship, and was named an OSU Top 10 Freshman and a National Coca-Cola Scholar.
He also was selected as a Top Ten Senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and received the Kenny Gallagher Award, which is given to the student among the A&S Top Ten Seniors who best exemplifies Gallagher’s example of scholarship, leadership and service. Gallagher had been elected to serve as president of the A&S Student Council for 1959-60, but died in a drowning accident the preceding summer.
Ensley is the son of Wendell and Rhonda Ensley of Valliant, and is a graduate of Wright City High School.
At OSU he has served as vice president and as an executive of Interfraternity Council, chair of the Student Government Association’s Speaker’s Board, as SGA Chief of Staff, as Business Student Council secretary, as a Student Alumni Board executive, and he is a member of FarmHouse fraternity. He also was a top 25 finalist on season seven of “American Idol” on FOX network.
Founded in 1897 and headquartered in Baton Rouge, La., Phi Kappa Phi is the nation’s oldest, largest and most selective all-discipline honor society. Phi Kappa Phi annually inducts more than 30,000 students, faculty, professional staff and alumni. The society has chapters at 300 select colleges and universities in North America and the Philippines. Membership is by invitation only to the top 10 percent of seniors and graduate students and 7.5 percent of juniors. Faculty, professional staff and alumni who have achieved scholarly distinction also qualify.