March 4, 2004

Senior named to USA TODAY academic team

Cristina Bejan

Cristina Bejan, a Weinberg College senior from Durham, N.C., has been named to USA TODAY’s All-USA College Academic First Team.

Two other University seniors were named to the second and third teams, and one received an honorable mention.

Bejan is one of 20 outstanding undergraduates from the nation’s four-year colleges and universities selected for this year’s top honors. Each representative to the 2004 First Team will receive a trophy and a $2,500 cash award.

Bejan is majoring in philosophy and theater. In November she was named a Rhodes Scholar, a prestigious scholarship that provides funding for two or three years of graduate study in Great Britain.

A playwright and actress as well as a student of philosophy, Bejan is a passionate advocate for ethnic and religious tolerance in Romania. She has written five plays, two of which were produced last year while she was a visiting student at St. Anne’s College of Oxford University. At Oxford, she plans to continue her studies in philosophy.

Bejan is writing her honors thesis on the applicability of Kant’s moral theory of autonomy to newly free societies, particularly Romania. She has spent significant time in Eastern Europe and interned for Freedom House Bucharest in the summer of 2002.

Tracy Carson, a senior from Chicago majoring in history and legal studies, was named to the 2004 Second Team. A member of Northwestern’s national-championship debate team for three years, Carson received a Marshall Scholarship in November as well as the Student Laureate Award for 2003 from the Lincoln Academy of Illinois.

Shawn Anthony, a senior from New Stanton, Pa., majoring in biomedical engineering, was named to the 2004 Third Team. He conducts nanotechnology research developing biomaterials to mimic natural bone. Susan Coelius Keplinger, a senior from Severna Park, Md., majoring in political science, received an honorable mention.