UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Former Penn State Nittany Lion fencer Gavin Turner has been awarded the prestigious Walter Byers Graduate Scholarship. Turner was a four-year letter winner at Penn State, competing in the men's sabre. He becomes the first Penn State athlete, male or female, to be honored as a recipient of the scholarship.
Turner graduated from Penn State in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Sciences and Health Professions. During his academic career, he served as an undergraduate researcher for Penn State's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for 2.5 years. Upon graduation in 2019, Turner started conducting research at Johns Hopkins for two years, then matriculated into the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in August 2021.
In 1988, the National Collegiate Athletic Association established the Walter Byers Scholarship as a means of recognizing the contributions of the former executive director through encouraging excellence in academic performance by student-athletes. Annually, one male and one female student-athlete are awarded a $24,000 Walter Byers scholarship in recognition of outstanding academic achievement and potential for success in graduate study. It is intended that an individual named a Byers Scholar will be recognized as one who has combined the best elements of mind and body to achieve national distinction for his or her achievements and promises to be a future leader in his or her chosen field of career service.
The Walter Byers Graduate Scholarship is separate and distinct from the NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship, which provides numerous annual awards with smaller stipends. The stipend for each Byers Scholarship is $24,000 for an academic year. If the graduate school where the Byers Scholar is enrolled provides evidence of the scholar's satisfactory performance and progress, the grant may be renewed for a second year. Therefore, in any single year, $96,000 worth of scholarships are awarded ($48,000 to the current year's recipients and $48,000 to the previous year's awardees for their second year of graduate school).
Turner amassed 82 career victories for Penn State during his four years as a competitor. He was a three-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree as well.
