Michigan Students Become Rhodes Scholars

Two Michigan residents, one from Dearborn Heights, and the other from East Lansing, are among 32 students picked as American Rhodes Scholar Class of 2018. The 32 scholars were chosen from a pool of 866 candidates endorsed by their colleges or universities and the scholars will begin courses at the University of Oxford next fall.

• From Dearborn Heights, Nadine K. Jawad is a senior at the University of Michigan and pursuing a degree I public policy and biology. She is also Truman Scholar, and the student body vice president. She also is the the founder of Books for a Benefit, where Jawad helps to provide supplementary programs and resources in literacy to students in Southeastern Michigan to advance more equitable opportunities in education. She is the daughter of Lebanese immigrants. At Oxford, she plans to do the M.Sc. in International Health and
Tropical Medicine.

• From East Lansing, Clara C. Lepard graduated from Michigan State University in May with a degree in zoology. She is passionate about animal and plant species conservation and is currently working as a research assistant in the Research on the Ecology of Carnivores and their Prey Lab at MSU, and focused on the behavioral ecology of lions and ungulates in Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda. She earned the Outstanding Academic Achievement and Promise in Zoology Award from the College of Natural Science at MSU. She will pursue a doctorate degree in zoology at Oxford.

The Americans will join an international group of scholars chosen from 64 different countries. This year's scholars represent a diverse group with 10 of the 32 selected students being African-Americans, the most ever in a U.S. Rhodes class.

"This year’s selections—independently elected by 16 committees around the country meeting simultaneously— reflects the rich diversity of America," said Elliot F. Gerson, American secretary of the Rhodes Trust, said in a statement.

The class also includes African and Asian immigrants; Asian, Muslim, and Latino Americans; an Alaskan Native (Aleut); and a transgender man. There also four students from colleges that have never before elected Rhodes Scholars in the 115 years of the United States Rhodes Scholarships – Hunter College, CUNY; Temple University; the University of Alaska Anchorage; and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Applicants are selected on the basis of academic excellence but that is only describe as a threshold condition. Scholars should also have "great personal energy, ambition for impact and should be committed to make a difference in the world" among other things.

The program is highly competitive and this year, more than 2,500 students sought an endorsement from their college or institution and 866 received the endorsement.

The scholarship was created in 1902 by the Will of Cecil Rhodes, a British philanthropist and African colonial pioneer. The scholarship provides all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford.

>>>You can see the full list of American scholars here.

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