Students from Northwest earn Rhodes scholarships
Thirty-two American college students, including three with ties to Washington state, have been selected as Rhodes Scholars for 2005, the scholarship trust announced Sunday.
The scholars, chosen from 904 applicants who were endorsed by 341 colleges and universities, will enter Oxford University in England next October. The scholarships, the oldest of the international study awards available to American students, provide two or three years of study at Oxford.
“Everyone experiences shock, not really having known what to expect, and all of a sudden hearing your name called out,” said Justin Mutter, a 2003 University of Virginia graduate from Lookout Mountain, Tenn. “After that it’s this sense of gratitude, not only for being offered a scholarship but for the community, the experience of the whole process.”
Mutter has spent much of the last year working in public health in Haiti and plans to study how global religious communities confront problems like poverty and disease.
Other winners include a Paralympic gold medalist in basketball and a political philosopher who has worked on a pathogen to control the invasive kudzu plant. Harvard University had five winners, and the U.S. Naval Academy had three — one of them from Washington.
Trevor C. Thompson of Kent is a senior majoring in history. He’s first in his class and captain of the varsity basketball team. He led the academy to adopt a new service program that takes midshipmen to Nicaragua each summer and plans to get a master’s degree in economic and social history.
Elizabeth Pearson of Indianola, Iowa, is a senior political philosophy major at Whitman College in Walla Walla. She’s a musician, poet, debater, a member of the Council of Student Affairs and tutors in the school’s writing center. She plans to pursue a master’s degree in development studies at Oxford.
Laurel Yong-Hwa Lee of Bothell graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this year with a degree in neuroscience and biology. As medical coordinator for Mission Honduras, she helped set up a centralized health care system for orphanages and women’s shelters serving several villages in the Central American country. She plans to get a doctorate in clinical medicine.
Rhodes Scholarships were created in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes. Winners are selected on the basis of high academic achievement, personal integrity, leadership potential and physical vigor, among other attributes.
The American students will join an international group of scholars selected from 18 other nations around the world. Approximately 95 scholars are selected each year.
Anastasia Piliavsky of Boston, who graduated from Boston University in 2004 with a degree in social anthropology, was one of three winners who immigrated to the United States from states in the former Soviet Union.
Piliavsky came to the United States from Ukraine when she was 14 and spoke no English. She has won numerous awards and travel grants for her academic work and has conducted anthropological field study in India and Mongolia. She has also shot and translated a documentary film about the indigenous Sahariya people of India.
With the elections announced Sunday, 3,046 Americans have won Rhodes Scholarships, representing 307 colleges and universities.
The value of the Rhodes Scholarship varies depending on the field of study. The total value averages about $35,000 per year.