National and global news about Rhodes students and alums

Dr. John Copper, who is a globally renowned scholar in Asian affairs, has published a new book titled Donald J. Trump and China, which assesses the relationship between the United States and China.

Dr. Michael LaRosa, associate professor of history and 2019 winner of Rhodes’ Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Research, has produced a significant body of scholarship on Latin American history and culture as well as U.S.-Latin American relations. His latest book is Immigration in the Visual Art of Nicario Jiménez Quispe.

When senior business major Bryce Berry arrived in Memphis in 2016 as a first-year from St. Louis, little did he know that his college journey would take him to Cape Town, South Africa. As a result of winning a merit-based scholarship allowing students to obtain work experience in a foreign country, he was a finance intern for the nonprofit organization Gold Youth. He describes it as an unforgettable experience that has equipped him with life and career skills.

Rhodes chemistry professor Dr. Mauricio Cafiero has been studying drug design involving new families of molecules that could help improve treatments for Parkinson’s disease. When he decided to expand his research and work with an international community of scientists this semester, he applied for a Rhodes grant that funded a Rhodes student’s participation in the research.

Driven by a love of being outdoors and on the water, environmental science major Bernadette Badamo contacted assistant biology professor Dr. Patrick Kelly last year about assisting him with his research on aquatic ecosystems. As a result, she has spent this summer in a canoe measuring sources of organic carbon in Mid-South area lakes to analyze how these lakes store and release carbon and how they cycle nutrients.

Students continue to win national awards after they have graduated from Rhodes. McKenna Davis ’18, a physics and mathematics alumna, won the Goldwater Scholarship in 2017 when she was a junior. Now as an aerospace engineering graduate student at UCLA, she has won the highly competitive fellowship.

Dr. Amy Risley, professor and chair of international studies at Rhodes, has a new book out titled The Youngest Citizens. Published by Routledge this summer, it traces the evolution of children’s rights in Latin America and analyzes a dramatic discursive and policy shift that has occurred since the 1990s.

Ben South ’19 has been awarded a highly competitive 2019-2020 teaching assistantship by the Assistants de langue en France program.

Study abroad is an integral part of a liberal arts education at Rhodes, introducing students to courses, internships, and research opportunities around the globe. The college is now making it possible for students to use their federal and institutional aid on any one of more than 300 Rhodes- affiliated semester-long study abroad programs.