Steph Bell Awarded Rhodes Scholarship

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Steph Bell, who was one of the top-ranked Lincoln-Douglas debaters in the United States prior to her graduation from Valley High School in 2004, is among the thirty-two American men and women chosen this year as Rhodes Scholars.

A 2008 graduate of the University of Chicago, Bell is an aspiring anthropologist who hopes focus on human rights, particularly for Africa and people with HIV/AIDS.

The following is an excerpt from a University of Chicago press release:

Bell, from West Des Moines, Iowa, was an Anthropology and Gender Studies major at the University. She first became interested in the importance of anthropology while an intern with the University’s Human Rights Program in South Africa, where she worked for an HIV/AIDS advocacy organization, the Treatment Action Campaign. She will use her Rhodes scholarship to pursue an M.Phil in Development Studies at University of Oxford. Her goal is to help in the global fight for social justice, particularly for Africa and people with HIV/AIDS.

“It doesn’t matter how many clinics, doctors and medications you can provide to address the AIDS epidemic if people don’t believe in Western medical solutions,” said Bell, 23, about her time in South Africa. “Anthropologists are crucial to devising ways in which Western medicine isn’t a challenge to local understandings of medicine or broader local value and religious systems. But it’s important that those anthropological insights can be communicated across development policy teams, which are often dominated by economists, statistician and political scientists.

“Oxford’s program is a great fit for me in that it has programs in economics and political science as well as anthropology, so that I’ll learn the methodologies used by other people on development program teams,” Bell said.

Bell’s Rhodes is the University’s 46th and its seventh in the last five years. The Rhodes Scholarships were established in the will of British colonial pioneer and statesman Cecil J. Rhodes and were initiated upon his death in 1902. The awards provide tuition and a living stipend for two years of study in any field at Oxford.

As a College student, Bell was elected a Student Marshal, the highest academic honor the University bestows to undergraduates, and was a Truman Scholar, a distinction awarded annually to about 65 socially committed college juniors in the United States.

“Stephanie worked very hard for this, and we’re delighted that she will have the opportunity to study at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar,” said Mary Daniels, Senior Adviser for Scholarships and Fellowships in the College.

Bell currently works for Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that helps nonprofits form strategies and develop their organizations. In her current role she has helped develop plans for the education of disadvantaged groups, including strategic planning for the Gates Foundation and the National Parent Teacher Association.

Popularity: 4% [?]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.