National and global news about Rhodes students and alums

Maya Searle, a senior health equity major from Knoxville, TN, has been awarded The Steve and Riea Lainoff Crop Trust Fellowship in Honor of Cary Fowler ’71. The fellowship is made possible through the generosity of Steve and Riea Lainoff, parents of Rhodes graduates Brian Lainoff ’11 and Mark Lainoff ’15.

Elliott has been a Le Bonheur Summer Plus Research Fellow since his sophomore year. “I was immediately drawn to the Le Bonheur program,” says Elliott. “It offers a full clinical experience that concludes with the completion of a research project, so it’s an amazing opportunity for students in any discipline on the pre-med track.” In December, he was invited to the annual American Epilepsy Society conference in Chicago to present his clinical research project on the anti-seizure medication cenobamate—the first Rhodes student to attend the event.

Rhodes alumna and diplomat MaryKay Loss Carlson ’81 has been nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of the Philippines. The nomination must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Rhodes College associate professor David Mason is the recipient of a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship. The distinguished Fulbright award will allow him to conduct research from May 2022 through January 2023 for his project, titled “Theatre In North India,” in affiliation with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.

Dr. Scott Newstok, professor of English and founding director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment at Rhodes College, has been granted a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to teach and research in Spain during the 2022 fall semester at the Universidad de Murcia. The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s highly prestigious international educational exchange program.

Last summer, Jay Chatterjee '23 served as a Policy Research Intern in Macedonia, Greece, and is excited to again intern abroad this summer in London as a recipient of a Mertie W. Buckman International Internship Award. “The Rhodes Edge is real," says Chatterjee. "That’s helped with my internships and networking. To me, it’s all about bridging the gaps. It is about learning in a smaller, liberal arts environment and then applying what we are learning in a broader, global context.”

Rhodes College senior Sabrina Simpson recently won the Undergraduate Paper Prize presented at the Southeast Regional Conference of the Association for Asian Studies. The award was for her paper, “Animal Ethics in Thai Buddhism,” which she wrote for the Buddhism in Thai Society Summer 2021 course taught by Dr. Brooke Schedneck.

The Rhodes College chapter of the Society of Physics Students (SPS) has won an Outstanding Chapter Award from the SPS National Office. The designation is given to fewer than 10 percent of all SPS chapters at colleges and universities in the United States and internationally, and it recognizes high levels of outreach as well as unique approaches to fulfilling the mission of SPS to “help students transform themselves into contributing members of the professional community.” The Rhodes chapter is advised by Professor of Physics Dr. Brent Hoffmeister and is led by student officers Giuliana Hofheins ’22 and Olivia Kaufmann ’23, both physics majors.

Facing massive power outages in Memphis caused by the recent ice storm, the Rhodes College mock trial teams quickly packed up and headed to Olive Branch, MS, to turn hotel rooms into courtrooms for Regional Tournaments hosted by Connecticut College and Pennsylvania State University via Zoom Feb. 5-6. Rhodes B finished as Regional Champions with a perfect record after defeating teams from the University of Maryland, SUNY-Binghampton, Holy Cross, and Villanova.

Rhodes College alumni Adam Wyatt ’21 and Veronica Kilanowski-Doroh ’21 recently presented research at the annual meeting of the Society for Classical Studies, which is the national association for classical studies. Their papers were written in conjunction with Ancient Mediterranean Studies courses at Rhodes in the fall of 2020 and selected by anonymous reviewers appointed by Eta Sigma Phi, the honorary society for the discipline.