Wagoner Scholarships Will Allow Four Rice Students to Study Abroad

Wagoner Scholarships Will Allow Four Rice Students to Study Abroad
BY DAVID KAPLAN
Rice News Staff
March 26, 1998

Next fall, four Rice students will experience unforgettable academic adventures,
immersing themselves in cultures on other continents. They are the first recipients
of the Wagoner Scholarships for Study Abroad, which provide for a year of international
study.

The scholarship winners are graduate students Tanya Dunlap and Stuart Douglas
and undergraduates Rebecca Sherman, a Sid Richardson College sophomore, and
Stephanie Taylor, a Brown College sophomore.

Dunlap will study in Romania, Taylor is bound for China, and Douglas and Sherman
are destined for South Africa.

"I’m extremely excited," says Sherman. "The idea of going for
a whole year–it doesn’t seem like a holiday. It’s an adventure!"

The Wagoner Scholarships for Study Abroad are awarded to Rice undergraduate
and graduate students who demonstrate scholastic achievement, dedication and
character. Each student is awarded $15,000. The academic prizes are the vision
of the late James T. Wagoner ’29. A veteran of World War II, Wagoner was an
avid student of international affairs throughout his life.

"The opportunity to award such generous amounts for study and research
abroad is truly unique within a single institution," says Patricia Martin,
associate vice president for student affairs and director of international education.
"The Rice community owes a debt of gratitude to the Wagoners for their
generosity and to President Gillis for envisioning this creative use of their
gift."

Says Mark Scheid, assistant dean of student affairs: "The Wagoner scholarship
program fills a great need at Rice, as is shown by the fact that there were
23 applicants–more than for any other major international scholarship at Rice.
The quality of the applicants was so high that, when we were deciding whom to
interview, each of the 23 received at least one vote from a member of the committee.
Rice would be proud to have any of these young men and women represent us overseas."

Dunlap, a graduate student of history, will study nation-building and the formation
of Romanian national identity in Romania. Her work will demonstrate how the
peasantry became an integral and active part of the Romanian nation. She will
do archival research in several Southeastern European locations. Dunlap says
that people often assume that her interest in Romania stems from having family
ties there, but she actually became fascinated with the country after reading
about the "double election of Alexandru Cuza" in 1859.

Dunlap believes the Wagoner scholarship is especially important to Rice graduate
students "who need to go abroad for dissertation research but have few
sources of support."

Taylor, an anthropology major, will study at the Dalian University of Foreign
Languages, one of the country’s leading foreign language universities, in Northeast
China. Through her course of study she will participate in the Chinese Studies
Institute, a multimedia educational center for instruction in Chinese language,
literature and international trade. Taylor will focus on learning Chinese and
taking anthropology courses.

Douglas plans to do research on victims of human rights abuses in post-apartheid
South Africa. He will work at numerous ethnographic sites, including human rights
and relief agencies. In the personal statement section of his proposal, Douglas
wrote that when he was growing up in South Africa and living under apartheid,
he "began to foster an interest in making sense of suffering and social
trauma."

Sherman, a sophomore history major, will also journey to South Africa to participate
in a program of seminars taught by professors from the University of Western
Cape. Her intent is to explore Cape Town’s struggle for ethnic and racial harmony.
She will also be involved in an independent study of the historical uses of
literacy in the apartheid system. She also hopes to intern as a volunteer in
an organization fighting illiteracy.