Marko Andryczyk selected as first recipient of Robert F. Clark Graduate Fellowship (10/04/98)

Marko Andryczyk selected as first recipient of Robert F. Clark Graduate Fellowship

by Yuriy Diakunchak

TORONTO - Tuition fees everywhere are rising, pushing the ideal of universal education further and further from the grasp of many students. However, a new fellowship provided out of a bequest left to the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies (CFUS), will ensure that one deserving student each year will get a break from that financial burden.

The Dr. Robert Franklin Clark (CFUS) Graduate Fellowship in Ukrainian Language and Literature started with $100,000 in seed money from the CFUS and matching funds from the University of Toronto and the Ontario provincial government. The total fund of $300,000 will allow for a yearly fellowship of $15,000 to be granted to a graduate student pursuing a master's degree or doctorate in Ukrainian language or literature at the University of Toronto.

The first recipient of this award is Marko Andryczyk, 29. Mr. Andryczyk holds a master's degree in Central and Eastern European studies from LaSalle University in Philadelphia. In the past five years he has spent a substantial amount of time in Lviv, where he has been working on a paper on that city's underground literary movement in the 1970s. In the course of his research, he met and befriended many of today's literary figures in Ukraine, such as Viktor Neborak and Yuri Andrukhovych, and has reported on the Lviv cultural scene for The Ukrainian Weekly.

"What I'm really interested in is contemporary Ukrainian literature," said Mr. Andryczyk. He is planning to apply that interest in his studies in Toronto.

Dr. Clark, after whom the fellowship is named, served as CFUS director in 1978-1979, was active in Edmonton's Ukrainian community and was granted honorary lifetime membership with the local branch of the Ukrainian Professional and Business Association. Dr. Clark traced his Ukrainian roots through his mother.

A physician by profession, he served as executive director of the Alberta Medical Association and as a senior medical advisor to the Workers' Compensation Board Rehabilitation Center in the 1970s and 1980s. He was awarded a Special Award of Merit by the Alberta Medical Association, the Outstanding Service Award by the Edmonton Academy of Medicine and the Harrison Memorial Prize in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Clark died in January 1995.

Morris Diakowsky, past president of the CFUS and one of the activists who arranged the fellowship with the university, said the foundation wanted the money earmarked for support of studies in Ukrainian language or literature, and a deal to this end was formally signed with the University of Toronto administration.

"If there is a point where that isn't feasible, they [the university] will have to get foundation approval [to redirect the money]," the CFUS past president added.

Dr. Clark's bequest actually totaled $200,000. The remaining $100,000 will be used to fund Ukrainian research at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) in Alberta, according to Mr. Diakowsky.

The CIUS is proposing to use its share of the bequest to fund the final two volumes of a three-volume history of Ukrainians in Canada. The first volume, "Ukrainians in Canada: The Formative Years, 1891-1924," by Edmonton-based historian Dr. Orest Martynowych was published in 1991. The next two volumes will cover the periods 1924-1951 and 1951 to the early 1990s.

The vetting and selection of candidates for the fellowship is the responsibility of the University of Toronto department of Slavic languages and literatures. "Andryczyk is the best candidate at this time," said Prof. Danylo Struk, a member of the selection committee.

Mr. Andryczyk said he is very happy to continue his studies in Toronto. "I've heard it is a very good program, the resources are great, the library is great. I'm very grateful for the fellowship," he said.

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