WSU endorses students in quest for top scholarships

PULLMAN, Wash. – A former football star, a soccer player and two honors students have been endorsed by Washington State University to compete for two of the world’s most prestigious scholarships – Rhodes and Marshall.   

 

The students submitted their formal applications last week following a lengthy preparation process. Applying for the Rhodes Scholarship are recent WSU graduate Chima Nwachukwu and senior Mariah B. Cameron. Seniors Erin Nicolai and Sarah Stark applied for the Marshall Scholarship.

 

In partnership with WSU’s Office of the Provost and Office of Distinguished Scholarships, the Office of Equity and Diversity provided leadership to better promote these scholarship opportunities to students.

 

“We have a lot of bright students,” said Michael J. Tate, chief diversity officer and professor. “But what we’ve learned is most of these students have not considered applying for prestigious scholarships. In many cases, they don’t even know they exist.” 

 

 

With a broad base of support, Tate and others organized information sessions on campus and spread the word through the Honors College, WSU Athletic Department and many other areas.

 

Tate said Nwachukwu, Cameron, Nicolai and Stark display all of the qualities necessary to be competitive applicants. Each has a grade point average above 3.5. They all have significant leadership experiences beyond the classroom and in the realms of sports, arts and community service.

 

The Rhodes Scholarships were established after the death of Cecil Rhodes, who dreamed of improving the world through the diffusion of leaders motivated to serve their contemporaries, trained in the contemplative life of the mind and broadened by their acquaintance with one another and by their exposure to cultures different from their own. Rhodes hoped that his plan of bringing able students from throughout the English-speaking world and beyond to study at Oxford University would aid in the promotion of international understanding and peace.

 

Each year, 32 U.S. citizens are among more than 80 Rhodes Scholars worldwide who take up degree courses at Oxford. Last year, 830 students applied. The first American Rhodes Scholars entered Oxford in 1904.

 

The Marshall Scholarship was founded by a 1953 Act of British Parliament and named in honor of U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall. It commemorates the humane ideals of the Marshall Plan and expresses the continuing gratitude of the British people to their American counterparts.

 

Marshall Scholarships finance young Americans of high ability to study in the United Kingdom. Up to 40 scholars are selected each year to study at the graduate level at a U.K. institution in any field of study.

 

Applications typically consist of a personal essay, up to eight letters of recommendation, a transcript, a photo and an official endorsement by a student’s university.

 

Stark said the application process was daunting and only became manageable through careful planning and good time management. She credits her professors for writing letters of recommendation and helping her identify sources of information on the topic she proposes to study.

 

Cameron said she was overwhelmed with the application at the beginning and eventually realized she would have to tackle it one piece at a time.

 

Feeling the pressure to achieve perfection, Nicolai said at one point she totally scrapped her personal statement and started over again from scratch.

 

“As an English major, I can thoroughly appreciate a rigorous critique of writing,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ve ever worked and reworked a piece of writing this much. It got to the point where I could practically recite my essay in my head as I was falling asleep at night.”

 

Nwachukwu said he received a lot of encouragement and support from some of his former mentors in the WSU Athletic Department as well those in the College of Liberal Arts (now the College of Arts and Sciences).

 

“I feel like becoming a Rhodes Scholar is quite a long shot,” he said. “But for the chance to study at Oxford alongside a diverse group of future leaders, I think it is well worth the effort.”

 

“This seems like an amazing research opportunity,” said Stark. “I really value the flexibility of the Marshall program and the way it can be tailored to my specific research interests.”

 

The four WSU applicants will hear sometime next month if they will be invited for an interview. The finalists will be notified prior to Thanksgiving.

 

“I’m very excited about our WSU applicants,” said Tate.  “I think they will be strong contenders and we wish them well in the review process.”

 

 

A varsity athlete with a 3.84 GPA, Cameron is a WSU senior majoring in psychology and has been a teaching assistant in that department. She has been captain of the women’s soccer team for three years and is on the President’s Honor Roll and the WSU athletes All-Academic Team. She was voted “Rookie of the Year” and also MVP of the soccer team.

 

Cameron assisted in promoting “Pink Out,” a WSU initiative to raise awareness and funds in the battle against breast cancer. She was a member of Coug Pals, a pen pal program aiding third graders in the areas of self-confidence, awareness of community and “error-free” writing. A coach in the National Women’s Day in Sports Clinic, she serves as a peer academic counselor at WSU.

 

Cameron is from Castro Valley, Calif.

 

A varsity athlete and 2011 honors graduate,  graduated from WSU with a cumulative 3.87 GPA and a 3.91 GPA in his major field of study, political science. He was football team captain and recipient of numerous scholar-athlete awards, such as the Pac-12 Scholarship; ESPN The Magazine Academic All-American; William V. Campbell Trophy Semi-finalist and Wuerffel Trophy Finalist.

 

Nwachukwu was president of Pi Sigma Alpha Honor Society and president of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. He volunteered for community service initiatives ranging from literacy programs to Cougs Helping Haiti.

 

An official presidential delegate from Washington state to the Democratic National Convention in 2008, he has extensive experience in government, politics and policy. He worked as a legislative intern in the office of U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and served in student leadership and delegate capacities locally and nationally.

 

With graduate credits earned at Georgetown University as well as the University of Texas, where he is enrolled in a Ph.D. program, Nwachukwu opted to be endorsed by WSU.

 

Nwachukwu is from Allen, Texas.

 

A WSU Honors College senior with a 3.9 GPA,  is an English (creative writing) major with a minor in political science and global studies. A contributor to local and regional literary journals, she is author of “The Art of Losing,” a published piece ranked among the top 10 of the many submissions made to the University of New Mexico’s prestigious Honors College literary journal, Scribendi.

 

A former exchange student at Aberystwyth University in Wales, Nicolai served as a peer adviser in WSU’s Global Learning Office and as an intern in the WSU International Center. She recently presented at a literary conference at the National Library of Wales and has written about life in Japan and Thailand. With a focus on travel writing, she has mapped out a scholarship proposal to support this interest.

 

Nicolai is from San Angelo, Texas.

 

An Honors College senior majoring in piano performance/pedagogy, Stark has a 3.89 GPA and extensive experience in teaching music and performance. She has studied piano with WSU music professors Jeffrey and Karen Savage. She plays both the piano and cello and teaches both. Her original composition, “Film Noir” debuted in 2009.

 

Stark was president of the WSU collegiate chapter of the Music Teachers’ National Association and won a gold medal in the contemporary piano division of Musicfest Northwest. Her honors thesis will focus in part on whole tone and modal sections, innovative instrumentation and symbolist textual inspiration in Debussy’s prelude “L’Apres-midi d’un faune,” as contrasted with the asymmetry and angular phrases of Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht.”

 

She is on the WSU President’s Honor Roll, was a Puyallup Rotary Club Scholar and was a Summer Keyboard Exploration Camp Counselor. She is interested in natural science and worked in the plant disease and diagnostic laboratory of WSU’s Puyallup Research and Extension Center.

 

Stark is from Puyallup, Wash.