MEDIA CONTACT: Chuck Loebbaka at 847-491-4887 or c-loebbaka@northwestern.edu

November 24, 2003

Students, Grad Receive Rhodes, Marshall Awards

EVANSTON, Ill. --- A Northwestern University senior has been named a Rhodes Scholar this year, while another senior and a recent graduate both have been awarded Marshall Scholarships. The prestigious scholarships, awarded to top American college students and recent graduates, provide funding for two or possibly three years of graduate study in Great Britain.

Cristina Bejan

Cristina Bejan, of Durham, N.C., received a Rhodes Scholarship this weekend. She is majoring in philosophy and theater at Northwestern.
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.

In addition to her studies and playwriting, Bejan also plays ice hockey and is an avid basketball fan.

Tracy Carson, a Northwestern senior majoring in history and legal studies, received a Marshall Scholarship. Carson also recently received the Student Laureate Award for 2003 from the Lincoln Academy of Illinois.

A native of Chicago, Carson has been a member of Northwestern’s national-championship debate team for three years. She was the first African-American woman to win a major national debate tournament. She has organized debate tournaments for high schools in Chicago.

Tracy Carson

Carson also is a campus leader at Northwestern. She is president of For Members Only, the Northwestern Black Student Alliance, and serves on numerous campus committees. She also is the assistant program director for Reading Rays of Light, a weekly tutoring program for youth on the south side of Chicago.

Carson plans to study for a Mlitt (Master’s of Letters) in history at the University of Oxford, studying South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement. She plans a career in civil rights law. Her research at Oxford will enable her to understand how non-violent movements uniquely affect impoverished communities.

Another Marshall Scholarship was awarded to Kate Elswit. Originally from New York City, Elswit graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern in 2002 with a double major in dance and comparative literature. (Marshall Scholarships are awarded to recent graduates, as well as current students.) As an undergraduate, she received a research grant to create and perform a one-woman show based on the life and work of Austrian artist Egon Schiele.

Elswit currently performs as a member of Hedwig Dances, a Chicago dance company. She also teaches dance, with students ranging from children with behavior disorders to bond traders and African refugee women’s groups.

Kate Elswit

Elswit has been accepted in European Dance Theatre Practice at Laban in London. She will study semiotics, such as Laban movement analysis, alongside choreographic practice. She intends to choreograph narrative works that reinvent modern dance as a more widely accessible art form without compromising content.

The Rhodes Scholarship awarded to Bejan is the first received by a Northwestern student since 1994. Those scholarships, the oldest of the international study awards available to American students, were created in 1902 by the will of Cecil Rhodes, a British philanthropist and colonial pioneer.

A total of 963 students nominated by 366 colleges and universities applied for one of the 32 awards this year. All Rhodes Scholars study at Oxford University.

The Marshall Scholarships finance young Americans of high ability to study for a degree in the United Kingdom. Up to forty Scholars are selected each year to study either at graduate or occasionally undergraduate level at an UK institution in any field of study. The scholarships were created by the British government in 1953 and commemorate the humane ideals of the European Recovery Program, known as the Marshall Plan.

In recent years, Northwestern students have been very successful in competing for the Marshall Scholarships. In the past six years, nine Northwestern students or recent graduates have been awarded Marshall Scholarships.

Approximately 1,000 students applied for the 40 Marshall Scholarships this year.

“We’re absolutely thrilled to have a Rhodes Scholar this year, and we’re also very pleased to continue to be well-represented among the distinguished ranks of Marshall Scholars,” said Sara Vaux, director of Northwestern’s office of fellowships. “These three young women are all remarkable individuals, and the University is extremely proud of them.”