National and global news about Rhodes students and alums

Four Rhodes College seniors are competing for the prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which provides a $40,000 grant for purposeful, independent exploration abroad. They are Isabel López, Benjamin Oelkers, Anna Parkinson, and Van Tran.

This past summer, Brittany Ashley ’23, Avery Comish ’24, Elizabeth Griffin ’23, and Isabella Brewer ’24, led by associate professor of art and art history Dr. Miriam Clinton, travelled to Porto Rafti to become part of the archaeological survey project known as BEARS.

Rhodes senior Anne Entz, who is the recipient of the prestigious Boren Scholarship, has been studying Mandarin Chinese at the National Taiwan University for the fall 2022 semester. “I chose to study Mandarin in Taiwan because I have had a wonderful experience studying Chinese at Rhodes, and I wanted to continue improving my Chinese language skills in an immersive environment,” she says.

He was awarded the Thomas C. Calhoun Excellence in Mentoring Award at the Mid-South Sociological Association’s 48th Annual Meeting held in Nashville, and his work the featured topic of the “Author Meets Legacy” session at the 52nd Annual Conference of the Association of Black Sociologists held in Chicago.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides grants for English teaching assistantships as well as for individually designed study/research projects abroad. Winners will be announced throughout Spring 2023.

Dr. David Rupke, associate professor of physics at Rhodes College, is software lead and member of an international collaboration of astronomers and astrophysicists studying distant quasars with NASA’s new flagship observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope. The European Space Agency has announced a surprising discovery made by the scientists using the telescope.

Award-winning poet Caki Wilkinson’s poem “Fox Song” from her book The Survival Expo was featured online Oct. 6 on Poet Daily, whose editors say they select the best and most interesting poems from publications for their thousands of readers.

She received the 2022 Henry C. McBay Outstanding Teacher Award at the 49th annual meeting of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers held in Orlando, FL, on Sept. 28.

The Department of Psychology at Rhodes has a long history of involving students in faculty-mentored research including more than 50 students annually on research teams. So far this year, three research teams have presented their research at different national conferences.

Emerson Fellows are placed with community-based organizations across the country and with policy-focused organizations in Washington, D.C. to make a difference in eliminating hunger and poverty in the United States. The new cohort of 18 change-makers began their work this month.