EVHS > Eastview Alum Ishanaa Rambachan Named Rhodes Scholar

Two poverty-fighting students at the Northfield college are among just 32 nationwide to be named Rhodes Scholars.

One college student worked in migrant camps in southeastern Iowa this summer, where she was an interpreter for a traveling health clinic.

The other spent two spring breaks organizing hundreds of classmates who traveled to the Gulf Coast to do volunteer labor for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

On Sunday, the two -- both seniors at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. -- were among 32 men and women from across the United States selected as 2008 Rhodes Scholars.

"I was shocked," said Ishanaa Rambachan, 20, a graduate of Eastview High School in Apple Valley, who got the news this weekend. "I think I exclaimed, 'Oh my God.'"

The students, selected from among 764 applicants from 294 colleges and universities, will head to Oxford University in England to begin graduate studies next fall.

"What the Rhodes committee looks for are people who have extraordinary intellectual accomplishment, but that's not enough," said David R. Anderson, the college's president. "They are really looking for people who also have a balance of excellence in their lives, and that means a passion for other things than merely intellectual attainment. Ishaana, for example, wants to save the world, and she probably will."

The two women are friends who have taken courses together and ran on the cross-country team as freshmen.

"It's incredible -- so I have a friend at Oxford for the next year and maybe someone to travel around Europe with me," Rambachan said.

Her parents grew up in Trinidad and moved to the United States in 1985. At St. Olaf, Rambachan and Novak have gotten mostly As and a B-plus or two. Novak majors in environmental studies and Spanish and Hispanic studies, with a concentration in statistics. Rambachan majors in political science and economics, with a concentration in Middle Eastern studies.

A member of the student government -- and currently its vice president -- Rambachan co-chaired a relief effort after Hurricane Katrina.

"The Katrina experience made me realize that America is not a paradise, that there is extreme inequality, great poverty in our country," she said.

She has studied abroad and worked in rural India, helping women start small businesses. At Oxford, she plans to study international development, looking at how to reduce poverty and increase political representation, especially among women in south Asia.

"We have always made education the No. 1 priority of our children," said Rambachan's father, Anantanand, a Hindu professor who heads St. Olaf's Religion Department.

Ishanaa Rambachan said she is grateful for the support of her parents, St. Olaf and her Eastview debate coach, Todd Hering.

Hering said she was the classic-debate state champion in high school and a national speech champion. "It's really nice when good things happen to good people," he said.

Rambachan (class of 2004) is the second Eastview alum to be named a Rhodes Scholar. Allison Gilmore (class of 2000) was named a Rhodes Scholar in 2003.

Elliot F. Gerson, American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, announced the names of the thirty-two American men and women chosen as Rhodes Scholars. They will enter the University of Oxford in England next October, almost exactly one hundred years after the first class of American Rhodes Scholars did in 1904. The Scholars were chosen today from 963 applicants—who were endorsed by 366 colleges and universities.

Rhodes Scholarships provide two or three years of study at Oxford. The Rhodes Scholarships, oldest of the international study awards available to American students, were created in 1902 by the Will of Cecil Rhodes, British philanthropist and colonial pioneer.

Rhodes Scholars are chosen in a three-stage process. First, candidates must be endorsed by their college or university. Committees of Selection in each of the fifty states then nominate candidates who are interviewed by District Selection Committees in eight regions of the United States.

Applicants are chosen on the basis of the criteria set down in the Will of Cecil Rhodes. These criteria are high academic achievement, integrity of character, a spirit of unselfishness, respect for others, potential for leadership, and physical vigor. These basic characteristics are directed at fulfilling Mr. Rhodes's hopes that the Rhodes Scholars would make an effective and positive contribution throughout the world. As he wrote, Rhodes Scholars should "esteem the performance of public duties as their highest aim."

Candidates may apply either in the state where they are legally resident or where they have attended college for at least two years. The state selection committees interviewed applicants on Wednesday, November 19, to choose state nominees to appear as finalists before district committees which met Saturday, November 22, in eight cities across the country. Each district committee made a final selection of four Rhodes Scholars from the nominees of the states within the district. Ninety-nine applicants from 58 colleges and universities reached the final stage of the competition.

The thirty-two Rhodes Scholars chosen from the United States will join an international group of Scholars chosen from eighteen other jurisdictions around the world. In addition to the thirty-two Americans, Scholars are also selected from Australia, Bangladesh, Bermuda, Canada, the nations of the Commonwealth Caribbean, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, Southern Africa (South Africa, plus Botswana, Lesoto, Malawi, Namibia and Swaziland), Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Approximately 95 Scholars are selected worldwide each year.

With the elections announced today, 3,014 Americans have won Rhodes Scholarships, representing 306 colleges and universities. Since 1976, women have been eligible to apply and 340 American women have now won the much-coveted scholarship. Approximately 1,800 American Rhodes Scholars are living in all parts of the U. S. and abroad. In this year's competition, two Rhodes Scholars were elected from Boston College, which had never before had a winner.

The value of the Rhodes Scholarship varies depending on the academic field, the degree (B.A., master's, doctoral), and the Oxford college chosen. The Rhodes Trust pays all college and university fees, provides a stipend to cover necessary expenses while in residence in Oxford as well as during vacations, and transportation to and from England. The total value averages approximately $30,000 per year.

Scholars make St. Olaf a colossus of Rhodes