Rhodes College fellows have served for a decade on the staff of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which provides support for the ongoing operations of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The Seed Vault houses more than 1.1 million seed samples from the world’s crop collections as a safeguard against catastrophic or accidental loss.

Benjamin Oelkers is among a select group of graduating college seniors nationwide to receive the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which provides a $40,000 grant for one year of independent study and travel outside the United States. Oelkers’ project is titled “Desertion of Pediatric Cancer Care,” with proposed destinations of South Africa, India, the United Kingdom, and the Philippines. He seeks to immerse himself in healthcare systems and community organizations to understand why a pediatric cancer patient would choose to stop lifesaving treatment.

Turley Arts Fellow Maxie Sansom ’24 is bringing one of Buddhism’s best-known stories to life in an exhibition of one of the world’s only complete set of paintings depicting the Vessantara Jataka tale. The collection is part of the Jessie L. Clough Art Memorial for Teaching at Rhodes.

Rhodes alumna Lucia Colbert ’81 was inducted into the Memphis Amateur Sports Hall of Fame on March 20. In off-road or XTERRA races, she has won three world championships as a triathlete and eight U.S. national championships. At Rhodes, she majored in art and was the college’s first women’s tennis player to qualify for the National Women’s Collegiate Tennis Tournament.

Business major Josh Floyd '23 cites ROTC as a major driver of his academic success and his commitment to Rhodes and the Memphis community.

Dr. Eric Henager, associate professor of Spanish, has been selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for 2023-2024 for Ecuador. The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s highly prestigious international educational exchange program, and its Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award sends American scholars, artists, faculty, and professionals abroad to lecture and/or conduct research for up to a year.

Hailey Connell ’24 and Anna Parkinson ’23 recently presented their research at the national meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology held in Atlanta, GA. With more than 7,500 members, the organization strives to advance the science, teaching, and application of social and personality psychology.

Dr. Shatavia Wynn, assistant professor of religious and Africana studies, has been chosen for Sacred Writes’ 2023 Carpenter Cohort funded by the Carpenter Foundation and made up of scholars focused on gender and sexuality studies. Sacred Writes—a project supporting individuals interested in developing a voice as public-facing scholars of religion—will provide the cohort with its public scholarship training and resources on how to translate the significance of their research to a broader audience.

A team of four Rhodes seniors and one junior won the local competition of the Chartered Financial Analysts Institute Research Challenge hosted by the Arkansas, Memphis, and Mississippi CFA Societies. The competition connects college students with investment professionals.

Karrington Knight, who graduated from Rhodes in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in international studies, has been selected to receive the Donald M. Payne International Development Graduate Fellowship, which will cover her tuition and expenses for graduate school and work thereafter with the U.S. Agency for International Development.