Margaret Nash, assistant professor at UC Riverside's Graduate School of Education has been awarded a prestigious National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2006-2007.

Professor Nash, who teaches the history of education at UCR, is one of only 20 U.S. educators to receive the $55,000 award this year.

"The National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Fellowship is the most prestigious award for junior education faculty in the nation. It is highly competitive and favors the most creative scholarly research," said Steven T. Bossert, Dean of the Graduate School of Education, "Dr. Nash is considered one of the most promising young scholars in the field of the history of education."

The Spencer Foundation which funds the fellowships devotes its resources to support the behavioral sciences as they apply to education. The fellowships are administered by the National Academy of Education which is an honorary educational society.

Professor Nash said the fellowship stipend will fund her latest research into the role of education in the historical formation of gender, class, and race identity.

"My new project asks in what ways the cultural meanings of education changed in the tumultuous decades surrounding the Civil War," Prof. Nash said.

Professor Nash received her bachelor's degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in 1999-2000.