 | Nathan Herring |
This year Yale seniors won three Rhodes and five Marshall Scholarships, two of the most coveted academic awards for study in Britain.
Nathan Herring, Jessica E. Leight and Chelsea E. Purvis won three of the seven Rhodes Scholarships awarded to Ivy League students this year. (Yale was the only Ivy League institution to have more than one winner.)
Rachel Denison, Daniel Weeks, Alexander Nemser and Sarah Stillman received Marshall's Awards. Herring declined a Marshall Scholarship to accept the Rhodes. Yale was the only Ivy League school to win more than two awards.
The 32 American Rhodes Scholars this year were chosen from 903 applicants who were endorsed by 333 colleges and universities. Rhodes Scholarships provide two or three years of study at Oxford University in England. The scholarships, the oldest of the international study awards available to American students, were created in 1902 by the Will of Cecil Rhodes, British philanthropist and colonial pioneer.
The criteria for Rhodes Scholars are high academic achievement, integrity of character, a spirit of unselfishness, respect for others, potential for leadership and physical vigor.
Profiles of the winning Yale students follow:
The Marshall Scholarships were established as a British gesture of thanks to the people of the United States for the assistance received after World War II under the Marshall Plan. Financed by the British government, the highly competitive scholarships provide an opportunity for American students who have demonstrated academic excellence to continue their studies for two to three years at a British university of their choice.
The scholarships are worth about $60,000 each. In addition to intellectual distinction, Marshall selectors seek individuals who are likely to become leaders in their field and make a contribution to society. The academic achievements of this year's scholars are matched by their commitment to public service, artistic talent and triumph over adversity.
Over a thousand young Americans have received Marshall Scholarships since the program's inception in 1953.
Profiles of this year's Marshall Scholars from Yale follow:
T H I S
Seven seniors Britain-bound as winners
of Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships
Rhodes Scholarship winners
Nathan Herring. Growing up on a small farm in Marlboro, Vermont, Herring was not expected by his family to go to college. A much valued football player, he continued to play on the high school team even as he took all the courses for his senior year at nearby Marlboro College, an arrangement that he brokered himself. Herring spent his first two years of college at the University of Miami. After transferring to Yale, he switched his major to psychology and, while maintaining a 4.0 average, volunteered at a local residence for mentally disturbed youth. There he developed an outdoor challenge and therapy program for troubled teenagers. Throughout high school and college, Herring has paid his way by working at a variety of jobs, usually general landscaping and logging. He is president of his fraternity Zeta Psi, and in his spare time has written and illustrated a children's book titled "House Mouse Got His House," following a logger and a mouse as they set about building homes for themselves. He plans to do an M.Phil. in social work at Oxford University and hopes to work with disadvantaged adolescents.
Jessica E. Leight
Jessica E. Leight. A native of Northampton, Massachusetts, Leight is majoring in ethics, politics and economics. Her interests focus on the economics of developing countries, particularly those in Latin America. A summer internship in 2003 at the Council of Hemispheric Affairs in Washington led to a position as a research fellow there, which Leight continues to hold. In that capacity, she has spent the past two summers in Chile and Argentina. Leight has also spent time in Haiti pursuing her interest in public health. For two years she was the national coordinator for The Student Campaign for Child Survival, a children's advocacy organization founded at Yale, which now has 20 chapters nationwide. She has been active serving the homeless of New Haven and has successfully campaigned to increase the capacity of city shelters. Leight plays piano in a trio and in Friends of Music at Yale. She plans to pursue an M.Phil. in development studies at Oxford, with the ultimate goal of getting a doctorate.
Chelsea E. Purvis
Chelsea E. Purvis. Hailing from Saratoga, California, Purvis is a history major who maintains a perfect grade point average. Her senior essay focuses on an obscure 19th-century American teacher, Mary Brewster, whose diary she found at the Beinecke Library. Purvis' extracurricular activities have included tutoring elementary school children, teaching Sunday school at her church and, as a co-leader of the student group Food for the Earth, organizing diverse events to raise the consciousness of fellow students and New Haven schoolchildren about food and the environment. She has also provided hands-on service to Yale's Sustainable Food Project. Her commitment to providing humanitarian service has brought her all over the world, from the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Haiti to Sierra Leone and India. She also volunteers at the New Haven Animal Shelter. Purvis plans to pursue an M.Phil. in economic and social history at Oxford. Working at a non-profit community development group in London last summer, Purvis saw the need for legal expertise among advocacy organizations, and she plans on a career in public interest law.
Marshall Scholarship winners
Daniel Weeks
Daniel Weeks. A double major in political science and international studies, Weeks is from Temple, New Hampshire. He is founder of Students for Clean Elections and director of the Democracy Fund political action committee. He has taught literacy in the New Haven public schools, served as a moderator for community forums and developed neighborhood revitalization and capacity-building initiatives. Before coming to Yale, he was an assistant teacher and program director for AmeriCorps in Washington, D.C., and an English teacher in Guongdong Province, China. In high school, Weeks co-founded the non-partisan New Hampshire Youth Voter Alliance. He has been a director of Americans for Campaign Reform, New Hampshire Citizens Alliance and New Haven Action. Weeks sings in the Yale a cappella group The Baker's Dozen, and he has participated in intramural athletics and independent circus arts, and written on public policy issues for the Yale Herald. He has maintained regular employment in order to pay his way through college. Weeks will use his Marshall Scholarship to pursue a Master of Philosophy degree in political theory at Oxford.
Rachel Denison
Rachel Denison. The St. Louis, Missouri, native is a cognitive science major who is interested in the neuroscience of attention, awareness and perception. At Yale, she has worked in the visual cognitive neuroscience lab of Marvin Chun, where she helps to conduct psychological studies measuring subjects' visual performance on specific tasks. With fellowships from Yale, Denison spent two summers doing research in her field at the Center for Brain and Cognitive Development in London and at a center for severely autistic adolescents in Paris. Denison has been active in Mind Matters, an undergraduate organization focusing on mental health awareness, education and service, and she helped to develop a community service partnership with Fellowship Place, a New Haven community center for adults with mental illness. She has also tutored New Haven public school students and has been involved in television production on the Yale campus. Denison plans to earn a master's degree in neuroscience at Oxford with the goal of pursuing an academic career.
Alexander Nemser
Alexander Nemser. A literature major who studies poetry in English and in Russian, Nemser grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His own poetry has been published in The New York Times and is forthcoming in The Atlantic Monthly and Literary Imagination. A poem of his will also appear in the film "The Good Shepherd," directed by Robert DeNiro, set for release next Christmas. He won First Prize in the 2004 Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Contest and represented Yale in the 2005 Connecticut Student Poetry Circuit. He is currently writing his thesis on the poets Robert Lowell and Boris Pasternak and the questions of poetic translation and poetic dialogue. He plans to pursue an M.Phil. in European literature at Oxford.
Sarah Stillman
Sarah Stillman. Named to USA Today's elite All-USA College Academic Team last year, Stillman lists among her achievements writing a book at the age of 15 for teenage girls (there are now more than 30,000 copies in print); founding and teaching in a tutoring program for inmates at a maximum security prison; making a documentary about Barbie Dolls and the exploitation of the women who make them; doing research on the plight of female factory workers in Latin America and China and joining them in their struggle for fair treatment; writing prize-winning poetry; organizing a national network of student-run tutoring programs for prisoners; and earning a 3.95 average as she pursues both bachelor's and master's degrees in anthropology. The recipient of the Elie Wiesel 2005 Prize in Ethics Essay Contest, Stillman donated her prize money to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
W E E K ' SS T O R I E S
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Professor, alumni receive National Humanities Medals
Study links strokes and common sleep disorder
Women's soccer team wins Ivy crown, makes NCAA 'Sweet 16'
Dr. David Fiellin receives support for research . . .
ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIPSYale scientists discover way to predict microstructure of crystals
Study finds that regular practice of meditation . . .
Grant to fund study of tics and Tourette syndrome
Yale veterans' sacrifices in service to their country honored
Study to explore effects of cholesterol drug on heart patients
Ceremony celebrates recent Davenport College renovations
Woolsey Hall Live
Yale awards fellowships to junior faculty
Production will take a new look at Shakespeare's most famous play
Newly created conference honors former dean of School of Nursing
Six members of the engineering faculty win awards . . .
Students will vie in simulated court cases . . .
Doctoral students, alumna win Gilder Lehrman Fellowships
Five former Yale athletes are lauded for their leadership
Campus Notes
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