July 18, 2000 – Hicksville resident Joan Ruckel has been awarded a travel grant from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association in West Branch, Iowa. In May, Joan earned her Master of Science degree in American Political Science at C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University with a perfect 4.0 grade point average while working full time as the Assistant to the Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the campus. Soon Ruckel will travel to Iowa with the help of the grant to continue her research on the Hoover Commission and the reorganization and reform of the U.S. State Department.

Ruckel recently learned that she was awarded the W. R. Castle, Jr. Fellowship, which is funded by the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation in Honolulu, Hawaii. The papers of W. R. Castle, Jr., who held several positions in the Hoover administration, are housed in the Hoover Presidential Library.

The title of her research project is "The Foreign Affairs Task Force of the First Hoover Commission: A Study of Reorganization and Reform." Her goal is to research the work and recommendations of the task force and the changes they brought to the Department of State, the Executive Office of the President, and the relations they share with Congress. These changes laid the groundwork for today’s structure of the Department of State.

The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association is a private, nonprofit organization, which supports the Hoover Presidential Library-Museum and National Historic Site. The grant program, established in 1979, has awarded over $400,000 in grants and encourages scholarly use of the holdings of the presidential library.

For more information, call the C.W. Post Office of Public Relations at (516) 299-2333 or the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association at (319) 643-5327.