Fifteen Stanford graduate students have been chosen as 2011 Siebel Scholars in recognition of their academic achievement and community leadership.

A faculty committee at the Graduate School of Business selected five second-year students — Amanda Luther, Sumi Kim, Danielle Buckley, Arvind Iyengar and Shane Lauf — from a class of nearly 400 students.

The students join a community of scholars from many of the top universities in the world in the fields of business, bioengineering and computer science. Siebel Scholars convene at annual conferences, where they discuss pertinent social issues and collaborate with other experts in their field. The scholars also serve as advisers to the Siebel Foundation, helping direct the foundation’s strategies and programs.

The scholars each receive a cash award of $35,000, which will fund the business students’ final year of school.

“There is obviously the monetary component to the award, which is really nice in terms of making school more affordable,” Luther said.

In a class of nearly 400 students, being part of a select group is also significant to the recipients. “It’s definitely a nice surprise and a huge honor,” Kim said.

Joining the business students are 10 students enrolled in engineering graduate programs at Stanford. Mindy Chang, Murtaza Mogri, Sarah Moore, Hedi Razavi and Angela Wu were selected from the bioengineering program. Salman Ahmad, David Keeler, Dan Preston, Keith Schwarz and Tao Wang were chosen from the computer science program.

Fifteen Stanford students, five in business and ten in engineering, also received the 2010 award.

Karen Davis, executive director of the Siebel Scholars Foundation, said the award grants more than recognition.

“The Siebel Scholars community is an active, lifelong community of leaders,” Davis wrote in an e-mail to The Daily. “They represent the best and brightest from across the globe, forming a unique professional and personal network, bringing together diverse insights and perspective from three disciplines at the forefront of solutions to world-changing social issues.”

For the winners, the ultimate impact joining the Siebel community would have on them was not immediately clear. They were still abuzz with the surprise of winning.

“There is this entire community of Siebel Scholars that I am just beginning to learn about,” Luther said.

Having worked for Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Luther said she may look to a career in sports management after graduation. Otherwise, she said, she may return to consulting, a field in which she worked for two years before coming to Stanford.

Because the Siebel Scholars community includes both business and engineering students, the long-term effect may come from the diversity of interests among the scholars.

“I’m doing work that could have a very strong technology connection,” Kim said, “so having that link to those communities is a huge bonus to the award.”