Support students who embody the spirit of Jessica L. Roy to further their studies about issues of equity and poverty in international development, especially in relation to women and the environment. The fund provides academic merit-based scholarships to up to two graduate students per year to support their travel and research in the field. Removing financial barriers to completing dissertation research allows students to focus on building scholarly knowledge in critical areas of sociology for social justice.
This permanent endowment fund is named in honor of Jessica L. Roy, who was a graduate student in the Sociology Department at UC Santa Cruz. Roy was in Kenya engaging in Ph.D. dissertation fieldwork when she lost her life after being struck by a car. Like many sociology students, Roy centered her work on interdisciplinary research, including environmental, feminist, and sociological perspectives.