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Southern Miss Colbourn Recipient of Prestigious Dissertation Award

Tue, 12/04/2012 - 04:39pm | By: David Tisdale

University of Southern Mississippi history doctoral student Colin Colbourn standing at the top of Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima.

Colin Colbourn of Elkhart, Ind., a doctoral student in history at The University of Southern Mississippi, is the recipient of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation's Gen. Lemuel C. Shepherd Jr. Memorial Dissertation Fellowship.

In its mission to foster the study of U.S. and Marine Corps history, the foundation established the $10,000 dissertation fellowship to memorialize the 20th commandant of the Marine Corps. It is awarded each academic year to a qualified graduate student working on a doctoral dissertation pertinent to Marine Corps history. Colbourn's dissertation is titled "Esprit de Marine Corps: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps through Public Relations, 1911-1947."

Colbourn's graduate program is housed in the Department of History's Center for the Study of War and Society. At Southern Miss, he has served as president of its Graduate Student Senate and won awards and fellowships that have taken him to historic battlefield tours in Italy, Sicily, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima and Vietnam. He is also a freelance writer for Leatherneck magazine.

A graduate of Elkhart's Concord High School and Ball State University, Colbourn is the son of Luanne Peterson of Elkhart and Charles Colbourn of Carmel, Ind.