In 1998, Frieda Bambas established the Bambas Scholarship in honor of her husband Rudolph, who was a professor of Anglo-Saxon in OU’s English Department from 1949 to 1985. A $2,000 scholarship has been available to English students interested in medieval studies every year since that time.
In 2017, it was found that unused money had acculumated in the Bambas scholarship fund. At the instigation of Conrad Derdeyn, nephew and heir of Frieda Derdeyn Bambas, and then-CMRS director Joyce Coleman, the College of Arts & Sciences brokered an agreement with the OU Foundation to use this unexpended income to fund a new Derdeyn-CMRS Scholarship fully in line with the donor’s intent.
The Derdeyn-CMRS Scholarship is set up to support OU graduate students from all departments who are working in medieval and/or Renaissance studies to travel to libraries, archives, or historical sites important for their research. By enabling students to visit and investigate the original sources of the medieval and Renaissance periods, the scholarship allows students to further familiarize themselves with the period and make a serious contribution to research in the field.
The scholarship is awarded once every year. The awardees from 2017 to the present are:
