By SALIMA BARDAY

Glamour magazine has been awarding scholarships to inspiring college women in the United States for 49 years. In addition to recognizing future politicians, C.E.O.s, doctors, and lawyers, the magazine selected one of Juilliard's own musicians, Dawn Smith, as a winner of its 2006 Top 10 College Women Competition. The 10 women were profiled in the magazine's October issue. Fourth-year violist Smith is known on campus for her commanding leadership, dedication, and her drive for success. Her everyday routine involves putting forth her best efforts. "I'm always giving 101 percent," she says. "I play and teach because I love doing so, not to win some award or get special recognition for it." In addition, Dawn was the recipient of the 2006 Strings magazine scholarship.

Violist Dawn Smith was named one of Glamour magazine’s top 10 college women of 2006. (Photo by Anthony Barfield)

What you may not know about Dawn is her involvement with introducing music to students who attend inner-city schools around the country. She is also a member of an African-American string octet, the Young Eight, which will be going on a tour of historically black colleges and universities this fall. The tour will include performances and outreach programs in grade schools and colleges whose students are mainly of African descent in order to create an awareness that this ethnic group strives for excellence and can achieve it in classical music as well as any other field. "Our goal is to communicate that if you have a dream, a drive, and a vision, anything and everything is possible." Dawn's administrative role in the group is as education outreach coordinator, and she is in the process of planning out the tour. Although she cannot invest as many hours as she would like because of schoolwork, she says that she hopes to devote more time to this effort upon graduation this May.

Active as a leader on campus, Dawn is a member of Juilliard's Multicultural Young Artists Network (MYAN) for her third year, this time acting as co-coordinator of the club. The group is open to all students in hopes of bringing insight to people of all backgrounds about the issues of diversity within the School, its surrounding community, and the arts. Dawn continues to celebrate cultural diversity through MYAN.

According to one of the judges from the Glamour competition, Dawn wrote a "blistering" essay about her work with inner-city children. Dawn attributes much of her writing success to Anita Mercier on the Liberal Arts faculty, who taught her for two years. When she first arrived at Juilliard, Dawn had major difficulties with writing in her humanities classes, she admitted. Her work with Mercier helped her overcome a major case of writer's block. Mercier notes that "Dawn has known some adversity herself, and she feels a strong responsibility to reach out to people growing up in tough circumstances. Music is her vehicle for making a difference."

To surprise the winners, Glamour held a special awards luncheon to which the 10 people named by the winners as being inspirational were invited—in Dawn's case, Mercier. Dawn says this remarkable experience was worth even more than the monetary award of $2,000. The photo shoot and the article in Glamour allowed other people to see her as a person, read her story, and in turn feel inspired to make a difference, as she did. If it had not been for this experience, Dawn says, "I wouldn't have been able to fully recognize the importance of what I do!"

Salima Barday is a third-year bass student.