  
Christopher Wells |
Yale seniors Christopher Wells and Andrew Klaber will find themselves studying at the same university again next year as recipients of prestigious scholarships.
Wells will study at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship and Klaber will pursue further study there on a Marshall Scholarship.
A history major with a strong interest in the Middle East, Wells will pursue a Master of Philosophy degree in that subject.
He was one of 32 Rhodes Scholarship winners chosen from 963 applicants representing 366 colleges and universities.
Wells credits a visit he made to Cairo to learn Arabic as critical to his decision to make the region his particular area of expertise.
He recalls being struck by the contrasts between ancient and modern in the city. "Cairo has layers of history going back to 3000 B.C.," he said. He noted that the urban landscape includes Coca-Cola billboards, on the one hand, and donkeys transporting goods, on the other.
The Middle East appealed to him not just for its historical significance, but also for the critical role it plays in American foreign policy and international relations.
At Yale, Wells was enrolled in the International Security Studies program, which offers advanced undergraduates and graduate students a chance to learn "grand strategy." Paul Kennedy helped to devise the interdisciplinary course in international policy, corporate planning and public affairs, which helps to prepare students for the leadership positions many of them will someday assume. Wells hopes to make a career in government.
Wells attended Thomas Jefferson High School and came to Yale intending to major in astrophysics. Not long into his freshman year, however, he saw his calling in the humanities. He enrolled in the interdisciplinary Directed Studies Program, which he cites as a watershed in his intellectual development generally.
In addition to an outstanding academic record, Wells is on Yale's Varsity Soccer team, and is the first Yale soccer player to receive a Rhodes Scholarship. He is especially grateful to his team for support and encouragement throughout the Rhodes scholarship application process, which is notoriously challenging. At Yale he has also participated in a number of theatrical productions.
Rhodes Scholarships provide two or three years of study at Oxford. The oldest of the international study awards available to American students, the Rhodes Scholarships were created in 1902 by British philanthropist and colonial pioneer Cecil Rhodes. Applicants are chosen on the basis of the criteria set down in Rhodes's will: "high academic achievement, integrity of character, a spirit of unselfishness, respect for others, potential for leadership and physical vigor."
Including the 2004 winners just announced, 3,014 Americans -- representing 306 colleges and universities -- have won Rhodes Scholarships. Since 1976, women have been eligible to apply, and 340 American women have now won the much-coveted scholarship. Prominent Yale alumni who studied on Rhodes Scholarships include former President Bill Clinton, LAW '73 , former U.S. labor secretary Robert Reich, LAW '73, journalist and former U.S. deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott (Yale College '68) and New Republic editor Peter Beinart (Yale College '93).
For Klaber, who is president of the Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Yale, the Marshall Scholarship punctuates four years of honors for outstanding accomplishments.
In his freshman year, Klaber received an Environmental Protection Agency Youth Award from President George W. Bush and Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency Christie Todd Whitman for a program he had initiated in his high school and at other schools in the Chicago region to buy recycled paper. Klaber established the Recycled Paper Procurement Initiative and website, which offers students guidelines for setting up similar recycling programs in their schools.
His other honors include two Morris K. Udall Scholarships for his contribution to the environment, a Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Scholarship, a Truman Scholarship to pursue graduate studies leading to a profession in public service, and selection by USA Today as a member of its 2003 All-USA College Academic First Team. At Yale he won the John C. Schroeder Award for altruistic work.
A double major in ethics, politics & economics and international studies, Klaber's extracurricular activities include serving as a member of the Yale Varsity Lightweight Crew team and as a coach for the Yale-New Haven Community Rowing Initiative, which offers inner-city students an opportunity to learn the sport. He also initiated the Little Economists Program, which advocates the value of an entrepreneurial education to underprivileged youths. He is a founding member and past editor of the Yale Politic, an undergraduate journal of politics.
During the summer of 2001, he participated in the Habitat for Humanity Bicycle Challenge, helping to earn the organization $250,000 by biking 4,200 miles, from New Haven to San Francisco. In the summer of 2003, while serving an internship at Goldman Sachs as part of his leadership award, he worked at the United Nations conducting research on children orphaned by AIDS. This led to his founding Orphans Against AIDS, a nonprofit organization that helps to educate children orphaned by the epidemic in the Chiang Mai province of Thailand -- an area he had visited on a Yale travel grant. Klaber was recently appointed to the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Orphaned and Vulnerable Children.
"One individual alone can't win a fellowship like the Marshall," Klaber contends, giving credit for the award to the encouragement and support of friends, team members, faculty and advisors at Yale. Most of all, he says, he is grateful to his parents, Mona and Stephen Klaber, whose own dedication to public service set an example for him.
Klaber will use his Marshall scholarship to earn a master's degree in development studies, a discipline, he explains, that "examines countries on the periphery of the world economy." He intends eventually to work for a non-profit organization.
The Marshall Scholarships were established in 1953 as a British gesture of thanks to the United States for the assistance received after World War II under the Marshall Plan. Financed by the British government, the scholarships provide an opportunity for American students who have demonstrated academic excellence and leadership to continue their studies for two to three years at a British university. More than 1,000 students apply each year for up to 40 scholarships.
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