Truman, Gates scholars named

For James Williams '06 and Rebecca Jones '05, dedication to public service and advocacy is paying off in an unexpected way.

Williams learned he had won the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation award Wednesday when he received a call from President Tilghman.

"I was completely surprised and shocked, but it was wonderfully exciting," Williams said. He did not expect to receive news until today, when the Truman Foundation will officially announce the 75 scholars out of a 602-student applicant pool.

Jones was awarded the international Gates Cambridge Scholarship on March 5 with 37 other U.S. students; however, the awards will not be publicly announced until later this week.

Marilyn Waite '06 was recognized as a Truman Scholarship finalist, though she did not receive the scholarship.

Truman Scholarship

The Truman Scholarship awards juniors interested in public service with $30,000 for graduate school.

The foundation, which Congress established in 1975 as a living memorial to President Truman, strives to locate college juniors with strong records in leadership, public service and academics, said Christy Klainbeck, the foundation's program manager.

Because each U.S. college can only recommend four applicants to the Truman Scholarship, the University required the approximately 40 interested students to submit preliminary applications in the fall.

Williams, who is majoring in the Wilson school, earned the Truman Scholarship for his long dedication to education advocacy. He hopes to use the award money to help pay for law school. Afterwards, he wants to return to his hometown of Portland, Ore., to advocate for education and environmental policy. He eventually wants pursue an elected office.

Williams currently serves as board facilitator for the Student Volunteer Council and has been an active member of the group since he participated in Community Action the summer before his freshman year.

Apart from his work in Princeton, it is his "remarkable interest in the welfare of high school education in the Portland area" that set him apart from other applicants, said Professor Stan Katz, chair of the University's scholarship selection committee.

In the sixth grade, he organized a rally to demand increased school funding for his Portland school district in the wake of education budget cuts.

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Throughout high school, Williams represented the 55,000 students in his school district as the only student member of the school board. He advocated for increased student participation in decision-making and drafted four policies that were implemented by the school board to codify these goals.

"We mobilized students from across the district and had dozens upon dozens come to board meetings . . . it was certainly no easy task," he said. Williams urged students to actively promote education policy, whether through publicly testifying, distributing flyers or writing letters to representatives.

Williams also founded Students for Oregon Schools, a grass roots organization to train and empower students to influence statewide education policy, he said.

"The idea is to pass the baton to the next generation of students . . . so they can have the knowledge and experience that their predecessors had," he said.

Gates Scholarship

The Gates Scholarship will fund Jones' yearlong Masters of Philosophy research degree at Cambridge University's department of psychiatry.

The scholarship program was established in Oct. 2000 after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated $210 million to Cambridge.

The award fully funds students' graduate education at Cambridge and provides a stipend of spending money.

The program chooses students on the basis of their intellectual ability and leadership capacity.

One of Jones' salient characteristics is her five-year dedication to brain imaging labs.

Jones aims to continue her clinical research at Cambridge on how children with high-functioning autism process emotions from faces.

"I have always been fascinated with mental disorders," said Jones, a psychology major. She has worked at the Eden Institute in Princeton, a school for children and adolescents with autism, for the past two years. She currently serves as the school's project coordinator and directs all University student volunteers.

Jones also has a special connection with London, where she spent three and a half years of her childhood. "I'm looking forward to be able to see the friends that I grew up with," she said.

After her graduation from Cambridge, Jones wants to obtain her Ph.D. in clinical psychology so she can pursue clinical research and as keep her options open to become a licensed psychologist.