Feathers in Their Caps

It’s been another banner year for student scholarships. In fact, in the past 10 years, Rice students have won 52 Fulbrights, 17 Watsons, 12 Goldwaters, 11 Mellons, four Marshalls, three Rhodes, three Trumans, two Churchills, and two of the very rare Luce scholarships.

Why do Rice students excel at racking up annual scholarship awards? The obvious answer, of course, is the quality of the Rice student body. “It’s not surprising to have so many scholarships year after year because of the amazing variety of areas in which Rice students excel,” said Mark Scheid, assistant to the president, who oversees Rice’s scholarship programs.

But there is more to getting scholarships than academic excellence. Another part of the answer is preparation. Rice begins building interest in academic success and scholarship opportunities early in the student’s academic career. Another reason is that the small size of the student body at Rice and the student–faculty ratio mean that professors know the students and will recommend them for scholarships, Scheid said.

This is the first year that a Rice student has received a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which was created in 2001 and funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Scholarship is for students of outstanding academic merit and leadership potential from every country of the world other than the United Kingdom who are committed to serving their communities and who have obtained admission to the University of Cambridge. “It’s designed to rival the Rhodes,” said Scheid. This year’s winner, Joseph Blocher, a 2001 Rice graduate, was studying the interactions between tribal law and common law in Ghana as a Fulbright scholar when he was summoned for his Gates interview.

Year after year, Rice has been successful in producing a large number of Fulbright scholars, relative to the size of the university. This year, four students received the scholarships to study abroad: Kristin Krukenberg, Allison Dennis, Jennifer Kaya, and Dan DeHanas.

The elusive Luce award also offers recipients the opportunity to study abroad—a year of living and working in Asia—and is another Rhodes-quality scholarship. Only 18 were awarded this year, and according to Scheid, it’s a difficult scholarship to win as a graduating senior because it emphasizes career strengths and a career track record that most undergraduates don’t have. Maria Stalford, who graduated in May 2001 with a degree in anthropology, applied last year as a graduating senior. This year, after gaining experience as a freelance journalist and as a curatorial assistant at the Rice Art Gallery, she was awarded a Luce and will spend a year in Vietnam studying and learning about Asian art and the art marketplace.

Cecilia Balli is one of 30 Paul and Daisy Soros New American Fellows for 2002. She was chosen from more than 1,000 nationwide applicants for this year’s fellowships, which are awarded to naturalized citizens or their children for graduate study in the United States. Fellowship winners receive a $20,000 annual stipend plus half the cost of tuition for up to two years of graduate study in the United States. The fellowships are funded by a $50-million charitable trust established in 1997 by Hungarian immigrants Paul and Daisy Soros. Three other Rice students have received Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans since the award’s inception.

The following recent Rice graduates as well as graduate students were listed as winners of National Science Foundation awards this year: Cecilia Balli, Jonathan Robert Behr, Kelly Denise Biddle, Ginger Chao, Brianna Lynne Conrey, Joseph Doyle Hankins, Kim Evette Hosemann, Judy Fay-Chen Hsii, Matthew Hartmann Kane, Michael Siavash Khodadoust, Alexandra Taylor King, Allen Lee, Paul W. Leu, Christopher Scott Neumann, Amber Jo Ann Rakowitz, Christopher Robert Ruehl, and Cliff Avery Thomas.

Of the 75 Predoctoral Fellowships in Biological Sciences awarded nationally by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, four were Rice 2002 graduates. Only Harvard and Princeton matched this number. The students are Jonathan Robert Behr, Daniel James Brasier, Michael Siavash Khodadoust, and Kelly Elizabeth McCann.

Senior José Canseco has received the Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Scholars Program Award. The Cooke Foundation seeks to identify and reward young people who have shown unique overall excellence, both in superior academic achievement and in extracurricular activities. The award will provide funds for Canseco’s tuition and fees until he graduates.

Modern world history Ph.D. candidate Ron M. Haas has been awarded a 2002 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. Thirty-three Ph.D. candidates at 17 universities nationwide have received the awards, which support original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences.

Three undergraduate and two graduate students received Rice University’s Wagoner Foreign Studies Scholarships of up to $15,000 for an academic year of study or research abroad. The undergraduate recipients are Tim Huegerich, a junior majoring in the philosophy of science, who will study at the University of Oxford; Victoria Gomez, a junior majoring in biological sciences, who will study at the University of Cambridge; and Victoria Zyp, a junior studying Arabic language and culture, who will study at the Al Akhawayn University in Morocco. Bheki Mngomezulu, a graduate student studying East African history, will conduct research in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, and Timothy Wood, a graduate student studying modern history, will conduct research in Cambodia. Rice established the Wagoner Scholarships in 1997 from a bequest of James T. Wagoner, an alumnus who graduated in the class of 1929.

Steven Pattyn and Victoria Zyp have won the National Security Education Program David L. Boren Scholarship. The award allows scholars to study in and about areas of the world critical to U.S. national security where most U.S. students do not study—such as Africa, Asia, Eastern and Central Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East.

Amelia Pousson won a $22,000 Watson Fellowship to study the ways sociological factors influence the transmission of AIDS and the effectiveness of HIV public health programs worldwide. She’ll gather data for her research in Brazil, Thailand, Djibouti, and Botswana and will finish her tour next summer in Geneva, Switzerland, taking six weeks to compile the data for a report to UNAIDS, the United Nation’s joint HIV/AIDS program.

Junior Emily R. Wheeler earned a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship this year. The Goldwater is the premier undergraduate scholarship for sophomores or juniors majoring in mathematics, engineering, or the sciences who plan to obtain a doctorate in their fields.

Seventy-nine Rice students were elected as members-in-course of Phi Beta Kappa. Election to Phi Beta Kappa recognizes outstanding achievement in the liberal arts and sciences.

And 25 graduating seniors were honored as members of Who’s Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities 2001.