A Weinberg senior learned Saturday that she will become Northwestern’s first Rhodes Scholar since 1988, and another student and a recent graduate were awarded Marshall Scholarships this weekend.
Cristina Bejan, a philosophy and theatre major, received the Rhodes Scholarship, which will fund her graduate study at Oxford University using her Rhodes Scholarship. Weinberg senior Tracy Carson, and Kate Elswit, Communication ’02, received Marshall Scholarships toward master’s degrees at any university in Great Britain.
Although no other students nominated by NU have received a Rhodes Scholarship in more than a decade, nine NU students and alumni have been awarded Marshall Scholarships in the past six years.
Bejan spent her junior year abroad at Oxford’s St. Anne’s College, where she studied philosophy, witnessed the production of two plays she had written and played varsity women’s ice hockey. After such a positive experience, she said she was eager to return and saw the Rhodes Scholarship as a means to fund her studies.
“I didn’t think I had a chance at all, but I needed money to go back,” she said. “Everyone at Oxford’s cheering for me right now.”
To set herself apart from the 962 other applicants this year for the 32 scholarships, Bejan performed a monologue for the selection committee from Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible.” One committee member told Bejan later that the performance had several people in tears.
With the scholarship Bejan will return to Oxford to study philosophy and expand her thesis on the application of Kant’s moral theory of autonomy to recently liberated societies, such as Romania, in which she said she has a deep interest.
Carson, coordinator of the black student alliance For Members Only, also will use her scholarship to attend Oxford and study African history. Carson laughed as she related how shocked she was when she received a call on her cell phone informing her she had been named a Marshall Scholar.
“I almost got in a car accident,” she said.
Carson, who applied for both the Marshall and Rhodes scholarships, credited the staff of NU’s Fellowship Office with helping her revise her application essays — 30 times — and preparing her for interviews.
“If we didn’t have (the Fellowships Office’s support), it would be impossible,” she said.
The application process for major fellowships is long and includes many stages, said Christopher Hager, assistant director of the Fellowships Office. Hager and the office’s director, Sara Vaux, said many NU students shy away from competitive fellowships because of the process.
“They think it’s out of their league, but it’s not,” said Hager.
“We say, ‘Take it one step at a time,'” Vaux added.
Vaux said many recent alumni also are not aware that they are eligible for some scholarships and fellowships several years after they graduate.
Since graduating from NU in 2002, Elswit has worked as a Pilates personal trainer and modern dance teacher in Chicago. The Marshall Scholarship she was awarded will enable her to enroll next year in the master’s program in European dance theater at Laban in London.
The Daily’s Dalia Naamani-Goldman contributed to this report.
