Another good scholarship season for Rice

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– May 23, 2002Posted in: Current News

Another good scholarship season for Rice
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BY MARGOT DIMOND
Rice News Staff

It’s been ”another good year” for student scholarships, according to Mark Scheid, assistant to the president, who oversees Rice’s scholarship programs.

In fact, Rice has had many good years in the scholarship arena. 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 Scheid.

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. And Scheid pointed out that with the new Century Scholars program, a two-year scholarship and faculty-mentoring program offered the top 5 percent of admitted students, he has been able to talk to Rice students as early as in their senior year of high school. The program, which is two years old, already has produced a Wagoner scholar, Tim Huegerich.

Another reason is that the small size of the student body at Rice and the student-faculty ratio means that professors know the students and will recommend them for scholarships, Scheid said. ”They also write great letters of recommendation for these students because they know more about them than just what they did in their class.”

The 2002 scholarship awards included four Fulbrights, five Wagoners, two NSEP David L. Boren scholarships, and one each of Marshall, Gates, Watson, Mellon, Luce and Goldwater.

Two awards of note this year are the Gates Cambridge Scholarship and the Luce. This is the first year for a Rice student to receive 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 scholars 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.

Luce, which offers recipients a year of living and working in Asia, 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 the Far East studying and learning about Asian art and the art marketplace.

Looking to the future, Scheid sees a continuing upward trend of successful scholarship applications at Rice.

”Rice students are the best — and the most interesting — in the nation. They’re going to win major postgraduate awards. In fact, sometimes the best advice I give is not to apply for the wrong award. Anne Countiss, who graduated in 2000, surprised many people, I think, by not applying for a Rhodes after her spectacular undergraduate career. But she had already studied in England and she’d always been interested in China; to apply for and win the Luce in 2000 gave her a chance at a life-changing experience — and that’s what education is all about, isn’t it?”

 

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