scholarships

The biomedical engineering major is one of 60 college students pursuing STEM degrees who were selected for the award.

Beauclaire Mbanya is the third Rochester student or alumnus to receive a Rhodes Scholarship. He will head to Oxford, UK, to pursue a master's degree relating to sustainable energy.

The national scholarship, which helps cover tuition, room, board, and fees, was authorized by Congress to ensure a continuing source of highly qualified STEM professionals pursuing careers in research.

The award will allow the physics and astronomy major to pursue a postgraduate degree at the University of Cambridge in the UK beginning this fall.

“I grew up feeling I would go to college no matter what,” says Hajim Scholar and computer science major Maisha Idris ’19. Idris’s story is striking, but not unusual at Rochester, where about 20 percent of undergraduates are first-generation, or “first-gen” students.

Cherish Blackman ’18, a Rochester native, and Jacqueline Tran ’18, of Brooklyn, will study Chinese language and culture after receiving full scholarships from the Chinese government.

Two recent Rochester graduates are among 92 students chosen worldwide to be Gates Cambridge Scholars—the most prestigious international postgraduate scholarship offered by the University of Cambridge.

John Cole ’19 will study Mandarin Chinese in Xi’an, China; Joy Nicholas ’19 will study Swahili in Arusha, Tanzania; and Jacqueline Tran ’18 will study Arabic in Amman, Jordan as part of the US State Department's scholarship program.

Established in 2002, the center has the goal of increasing diversity in higher education by building an educational pipeline, from undergraduate through graduate school, for students who might not otherwise have had access to higher education.

Aaron Banks ’18 and Julianne McAdams ’17 have won scholarships to the highly competitive program of workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.