Rice student selected as Rhodes Scholar

CONTACT: Margot Dimond
PHONE: (713) 348-6775
E-MAIL: mdimond@rice.edu

Rice student selected as Rhodes Scholar

Noorain F. Khan, a senior at Rice University, is among the 32 college students selected Sunday as Rhodes Scholars for 2006.

The Scholars, who were chosen from 903 applicants, will enter the University of Oxford in England next October.

Khan, from Grand Rapids, Mich., is majoring in political science, women and gender studies and religious studies at Rice. She is writing her senior thesis on issues relating to the veiling of Muslim women. As a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, she also is researching the attitudes toward the veiling of Pakistani-American immigrants.

An active campus leader, Khan chairs the Student Forum of Rice’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and has interned at Shirkat Gah (a Pakistani NGO dealing with women’s rights), the U.S. Senate, the Middle East Institute, Amnesty International and the Baker Institute Energy Forum. In addition, she has been recognized by Girl Scouts U.S.A. as a “Young Woman of Distinction,” which is awarded to the top Girl Scouts in the country, for her work in Muslim community organizing.

At Oxford, she plans to pursue a master of philosophy degree in migration studies.

Rhodes Scholarships – the oldest of the international study awards available to American students – provide two or three years of study at Oxford.The scholarships were created in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes. The first class of American Rhodes Scholars entered Oxford in 1904.

Applicants are chosen on the basis of the criteria set down in Rhodes’ will, including high academic achievement, integrity of character, a spirit of unselfishness, respect for others, potential for leadership and physical vigor.

The American students will join an international group of Scholars chosen from 13 other nations. Approximately 85 Scholars are selected worldwide each year.