Deja Walls, a senior biology major at Rhodes College who is interested in pursuing a career as a physician assistant, has been selected as a recipient of the BlueCross Power of We Scholarship. The $10,000 award is funded by the BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Foundation.

Lynx to the Past, produced by Rhodes College’s Information Services staff, uses the college’s digital and physical archives to tell stories about the campus’ history, mysteries, and legends.The first two episodes of the podcast focus on the origins of the Whiteball competition, the Rhodes Seal located in Southwestern Hall, and the bronze lynx statue in front of the Rhodes Tower.

Niche produces report cards and comprehensive rankings for U.S. colleges, K-12 schools, and neighborhoods. With overall high grades for academics, professors, diversity, and value, Rhodes ranked No. 1 for Best Liberal Arts Colleges in Tennessee and No. 2 for Best Colleges in Tennessee. It came in No. 1 for Best Colleges in Memphis.

Teaching remotely, Dr. Shana Stoddard and her first-year lab students found an antiviral compound that may be able to shorten the length of illness for patients with COVID-19. They also figured out how to design the drugs to interact with the coronavirus protein better to facilitate better drug design. The students' work was published  in the Journal Viruses on August 26.

Rhodes will have a new supercomputing center, thanks to a two-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant of $389,662. Dr. Brian Larkins, associate professor of computer science, is principal investigator, and José Rodriguez, chief information officer, is co-principal investigator for the project, which is titled “CC* Compute: A High-Performance Computing Cluster To Accelerate Research, Education, And Training At Rhodes College.”

Despite the pandemic putting a halt to hospital internships and fellowships this summer, Demi Shamsi-Basha ’22 remained committed to public health and to helping the Memphis community. Volunteering on the front lines of Church Health’s drive-through COVID-19 testing site at Crosstown Concourse, the neuroscience major has borne witness to the realities of the pandemic in Memphis and the vigorous citywide efforts to slow the spread.

Rhodes College opens its one hundred and seventy-second session with a virtual convocation Saturday, August 22, at 10:00 a.m. CDT, welcoming the Class of 2024. The event will stream live at www.rhodes.edu.

Dr. Clara Pascual-Argente, L. Palmer Brown Chair in Interdisciplinary Humanities and associate professor of Spanish at Rhodes College, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant, together with Dr. Emily Francomano of Georgetown University, to support work on an edition and translation of two medieval Iberian narratives about fictional king Apollonius of Tyre. Their work will appear in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library collection, published by Harvard University Press.

Rhodes College welcomes 10 new faculty to its distinguished roster for the 2020-2021 academic year in the areas of biology, history, modern languages and literatures, political science, psychology, sociology, and religious studies.

Aaron Weist '21 spent the summer interning remotely for the lead organization for the Memphis Continuums of Care program, a national organization committed to ending homelessness by developing strategies in the specific communities in which it is based. Says Weist, “Rhodes has provided me with so much knowledge about the state of the U.S. and how far we are from achieving true equality. Memphis has not only given me the opportunity to see systemic differences on a large scale, but has so many wonderful nonprofits making a real difference that it’s easy to get involved with something you’re passionate about.”