SPRINGFIELD, Mo., March 28, 2025 – Drury University juniors Chloe Harnar and Zachary Stockton have been selected as finalists for the prestigious Truman Scholarship. The Truman Foundation’s Finalist Selection Committee chose 201 students from 137 institutions to interview with the Foundation’s Regional Review Panels, which began on March 2nd and continue through April 7th. Overall, the Foundation received 743 applications from 288 institutions.
As finalists, Harnar and Stockton joined eleven others from Missouri, Iowa, and Kansas in Kansas City, Mo., to interview for the opportunity to receive graduate school scholarships.
“The Truman Scholarship is the premier competitive award for Public Service,” Drury Professor of History and Fellow for the National Scholarships Shelley Wolbrink said. “It’s a special feather in the cap that Harry S. Truman was from Missouri. When Congress established the award in 1975, it was to reward leaders who demonstrated dignity in helping marginalized communities and serving as leaders to uplift others. And we believe both Chloe and Zachary are tremendous examples of that philosophy.”
Meet Drury’s 2025 Truman Scholarship Finalists
Chloe Harnar is a Political Science major (Graphic & Digital Design and Women & Gender Studies minors) from Galena, Kan. She has a long record of public service with Head Start and the Lafayette House. Her policy proposal addressed Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, to end violence against Native American women. Her single most important issue is gender equality. Harnar is also a leader in the Political Science honorary and on the STUNT team. She proposed to attend Arizona State University after graduation to earn a master’s degree in human rights and begin work at Rapha International. Beyond her op-ed in the Springfield News-Leader on the extremes of payday loans, Harnar addressed the Springfield city council about gender equity and they instituted her call to end gendered language locally in formal meetings and municipal documents.
“I am passionate about uplifting and supporting disadvantaged communities,” Harnar said. “Through my internships with a domestic violence shelter and Head Start, an early childhood education program for low-income families, I have gained firsthand experience in advocating for vulnerable populations and addressing systemic inequalities. Additionally, I am actively involved in campus organizations that promote social justice, with my focus being on Indigenous rights and gender equality. In my future career, I will strive to create policies and programs that empower marginalized groups and foster a more inclusive society.”
Zachary Stockton is an English & Writing major (Honors & Leadership minor) from Topeka, Kan. He works to foster housing humanity and fight poverty, his single greatest issue. As a member of SAAB, BUIC, the Mirror, the English Honorary, and a CLS finalist for Tanzania, he is active on campus. Off campus, he devotes his time to the Springfield Tenants Union (STUN) as a communications writer and journalist. He is the author and producer of several creative works relating to social justice and housing. His policy proposal to Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) addressed the need for federal mandates protecting housing applicants from revealing their HUD subsidies, as some states have already instituted. As part of his proposal, Stockton chose New York University’s M.A. in Public Management and Community Advocacy, with a specialization in Inequality Studies. Stockton recently attended an anti-poverty summit fully paid for by Empower Missouri, and has also helped organize a Grocery Brigade to help deliver food to the elderly and/or disabled tenants of the HUD-subsidized Jenny Lind Hall.
“It was an honor to be nominated and then surrounded by such powerful advocates from across the country as a finalist,” Stockton said. “I will use my leadership abilities to support the physical spaces of working-class families who generationally suffer from housing injustice. I am an advocate for the needs of the communities who, due to systemic inequity, fall short in securing habitable housing and food security.”
Results will be announced in early April. For a complete list of the finalists, visit here: https://www.truman.gov/news/2025-truman-finalists
About the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation
The Truman Foundation is the nation’s official living memorial to our thirty-third president and the presidential monument to public service. We are an independent federal agency within the White House complex. Created by Congress in 1975, the Foundation was President Truman’s idea. A pragmatic Midwesterner who did not attend college, President Truman did not want a brick-and-mortar monument. Instead, he encouraged a living memorial that would give life to the values of service that animated his career. In that spirit, the Truman Foundation supports Americans answering the call to serve.
###
Media Contact: Cris Belvin, Director of University Communications & Media Relations | (417) 873-7392 | gbelvin@drury.edu