Summer
2003 VOL.59, NO.4 |
Rice students were honored yet again this year with an astounding number of competitive and prestigious awards for exceptional scholarship in the humanities and sciences. Sid Richardson College junior Joseph Elias was one of 300 undergraduate sophomores and juniors in the United States this year who were awarded a nationally competitive Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. A biochemistry and psychology major, Elias plans to pursue a career in medicine, with the goal of becoming the principal investigator of a medical school laboratory where he will direct research that can be applied to patient care. Elias currently is in the Rice/Baylor Medical Scholars Program and works in the neuroscience lab at Baylor College of Medicine. This summer he will continue working there through the Summer Medical and Research Training (SMART) Program and plans to work there until he graduates from Rice. The Goldwater scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,093 mathematics, science, and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. Sophomores and juniors are eligible for the award, which covers the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board for one to two years. The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency established in 1986. The scholarship program honoring Senator Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. This year, recent graduate Uri McMillan won a Mellon Fellowship, an award for outstanding humanities majors that covers the cost of a year’s tuition and includes a $17,500 stipend. McMillan was one of nearly 90 other students around the country to receive the award, and he plans to pursue a Ph.D. in African American studies at Yale. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York has awarded about 1,900 fellowships since 1982 and aims to increase the number of students, particularly minority students, who pursue doctorates. Six students—three undergraduate, three graduate—will be spending the next academic year studying abroad, each having earned a $15,000 Wagoner Foreign Studies Scholarship. Lovett College senior Leigh Sylvan feels “really fortunate to be a student at Rice and to have the opportunity that this scholarship provides.” The history major will be going to Uganda to study development in the fall semester. In the spring semester, Sylvan will go to Switzerland to study Geneva’s international organizations and their efforts to further social justice. Music major Jennifer Oliver will travel to Mannheim, Germany, where she plans to study German and piano. Veronica Patton, a junior English major, will study English with a concentration on British literature of the Restoration and the Enlightenment at Queen Mary, University of London. Natalie Bayer, a graduate student in history, will head to Moscow, London, and Edinburgh, Scotland, to further research her dissertation topic, the interactions between the Russian and Western Masonic Lodges in the 18th century. Graduate student in anthropology Michael Powell will be going to Poland to study information access laws. More specifically, Powell said he will study the groups of people who commonly use these laws to access government-held documents, as well as advocacy groups and nongovernmental organizations that support transparency and openness in what is still a relatively new democracy. Connie Moon Sehat, a graduate student in history, will travel to Germany, mostly staying in Berlin and Munich. “I will be researching the way Germans consider issues of technology and society amidst the violent political upheavals of the 20th century within the framework of technology museums,” she said. The Wagoner Foreign Studies Scholarships are awarded to Rice undergraduate and graduate students who demonstrate scholastic achievement, dedication, and character. Rice established the scholarships in 1997 through provisions made by the late James T. Wagoner ’29, an avid student of international affairs throughout his life. When Erin Mann visited Europe in 2001, she spent much of her time immersed in studies as part of Rice’s study-abroad program. Mann will return to Europe this fall, but this time, she’ll be giving lectures, not listening to them. She has been selected as an English-language teaching assistant through the Fulbright Commission. “I wanted an experience that would immerse me in the German language but, more importantly, in a community, and this program seemed the best way to do it,” Mann said. “I’ve been assigned to the town of Stegersbach, in eastern Austria, about 120 kilometers south of Vienna. Only 2,400 people live there—there’s no way I won’t be a part of the community, and I’m really excited about that.” Mann, who graduated magna cum laude this year with degrees in English and German, will be assisting in English instruction at a high school 12 hours a week from October through May. Mann also was named a fellow of Hanszen College and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She plans to attend graduate school on her return and hopes to become a professor of English. Since 1963, this Fulbright program, financed by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, has provided college and university graduates with opportunities to work at secondary schools throughout Austria as teaching assistants. U.S. teaching assistants not only enhance the instruction of English as native speakers; they also are an important resource for firsthand information about the “American way of life” and are representatives of the United States. Rice undergraduates Daniel Conway, Shannon Hughes, Edward Knudsen, and Jyotirmai Uppuluri and Rice grad students Darryl Dickerson, Zarana Patel, and Alexander Simms were among only 900 of the nation’s top up-and-coming scientists to win National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships this year. The students will receive a $27,500 stipend and three years of financial support toward their graduate educations. The fellowships are funded by the National Science Foundation and aim to strengthen scientific endeavor in the United States. The yearlong research in Europe that Rice architecture graduate Heather Pfaff ’03 plans to do with her Thomas J. Watson Fellowship should shed some light—literally—on her career interest: designing religious buildings. Pfaff won the fellowship for a research proposal titled “Illumination,” a study of natural light in religious structures. The Watson Foundation awards up to 60 fellowships each year to graduates of Rice and 49 other participating institutions. These fellowships provide for a year of independent study and travel abroad after graduation. The fellowship requires the recipient to spend 365 days outside the United States, so Pfaff is heading to Europe, where she will observe architecturally significant churches, temples, and mosques in 19 countries. Her research sites are located along the longitudinal line 20 degrees east because she wants to analyze how the architecture is affected by the natural lighting conditions at that position on the globe. “My goal is to learn to become a better designer for sacred space,” said Pfaff. “Religious architecture is the most profound building type you can encounter because it is designed to be a structure in and of itself, to be used only for worship, and it allows for true creativity to come through.” Pfaff plans to leave for Finland in August. She has to budget the $22,000 she received for the fellowship to cover all expenses, including travel, food, and lodging, as she moves on to Denmark, France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Spain, and other countries. After a year of pursuing her passion through independent study, Pfaff will return to Rice for two more years to complete a preceptorship and the professional degree program for architecture. For the next year, Rice graduate Olivia Allison will be studying how journalists in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan are making the transition to a post-Communist government. Allison, who received the Roy and Hazel Zeff Memorial Fellowship, will spend four months in each country learning what it is like to work as a journalist and what issues are encountered in the transition to a democracy. Allison plans to interview journalists about their jobs and will work with both English- and Russian-language newspapers. She also plans to interview her host families and other citizens to get their opinions of the media and write a paper based on her experience. Allison graduated with a degree in Slavic studies and was the senior editor of the Rice Thresher. Prior to that, she was the Thresher’s news editor. She is a member of the standing committee on campus security. The Zeff Fellowship, created by Stephen Zeff, the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Accounting at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, is given to the Rice student who received the most nominations for a Watson Fellowship but did not receive the award. Both the Zeff and Watson fellowships give students about $22,000 to travel abroad and spend one year working on a research project. Seventy-five 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. To be considered, a student must have completed at least 90 semester hours in courses that reflect the pursuit of learning for its own sake, rather than for the development of professional skills. And 16 graduating seniors were honored as members of Who’s Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities 2002. |
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