Erika Isbill of Jonesboro is the recipient of this year’s Linda M. McFarland History Scholarship at Williams Baptist University.  She was recently presented the award by Dr. Tom Jones, WBU’s president.  

Isbill, a senior history major at Williams, is a graduate of Jonesboro High School.  After completing her studies at WBU, she plans to attend graduate school to study Latin American history, and she hopes to become a college professor.  She is the daughter of Eric & Marsha Isbill of Jonesboro.
The McFarland Scholarship was established in memory of Dr. Linda Gayle (Miller) McFarland, who was chair of the WBU Department of History.  She was a member of the Williams faculty during the 1980s and ‘90s.

The endowed scholarship was established by McFarland’s husband, Dr. C.K. “Mac” McFarland, a former Arkansas State University professor who now lives in Granbury, Tex.  The scholarship is awarded annually to the WBU history major who has earned the highest grade point average by the end of his or her junior year.

Linda McFarland was a graduate of Snyder (TX) High School and earned her B.A. degree from Texas Tech University, M.A. degree from Texas Christian University, and Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.  Dr. McFarland taught at public and private institutions in Texas, New Mexico, and Arkansas.  Her major field of interest was United States diplomatic history.

She was a popular classroom teacher, a recipient of the Professor of the Year Award at WBU, and a successful author who published “Cold War Strategist: Stuart Symington and the Search for National Security” (2001), which won the Myrna F. Bernath Book Award for the best book written by a woman in the field of American foreign relations.

Williams is a Christian liberal arts college in Walnut Ridge.