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Ellis Wins Cooke Scholarship

Ellis, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was one of 77 scholarship winners named today by the foundation. The graduate scholarships cover tuition, room, board, fees and books – as much as $50,000 annually – for up to six years.

“This is a huge unexpected honor, and it’s certainly a huge relief when it comes to funding my work in the humanities,” said Ellis, who plans to become a documentary filmmaker. Since graduating from Occidental with a dual degree in history and film production, Ellis has worked as a program director at a nonprofit public arts program in New York. She also was a post-production supervisor for a documentary on hula dance. Additionally, Ellis taught camera at the School of Cinema & Performing Arts.

Ellis gained an interest in anthropology as a high school student in Portland, Ore. It was then that she visited Australia and watched indigenous populations attempt to preserve their culture through dance. “With hundreds of year of violence and oppression against them, this is their way of reacting to that oppression and maintaining some form of indigenous identity,” Ellis said.

Now in its fifth year, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s Graduate Scholarship Program has recognized 286 scholars in the United States and abroad. This year’s winners come from 33 states and nine foreign countries.

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is a private, independent foundation established in 2000 by the estate of Jack Kent Cooke to help young people of exceptional promise reach their full potential through education. It focuses in particular on students with financial need. The foundation’s programs include scholarships to undergraduate, graduate and high school students, and grants to organizations that eve high-achieving students with financial need.