Miami University

Miami senior wins Rhodes Scholarship

12/09/2001

Anne Kafoure, a Miami University senior from Westerville, was named a Rhodes Scholar today (Dec. 9).

She is one of 32 students from around the country selected for the prestigious award program, which provides for two or three years of study at Oxford University in England.

The Rhodes is one of a string of honors that Kafoure has received.

A book she wrote and illustrated-The Whale Dancers-was published internationally in 1994 when she had just started high school.

While at Miami, Kafoure, a triple major in creative writing, English literature and women’s studies, has been named to Phi Beta Kappa, received the Greer/Hepburn Senior Prize in English, studied at Selwyn College in Cambridge, been named a Summer Scholar and participated in the university’s honors program.

She also has written for two undergraduate magazines, served as a summer orientation leader, worked as a campus tour guide and been named a Benjamin Harrison Scholar and a Scholar Leader.

Her community service has included serving as a summer intern at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbus, working with mentally and physically handicapped children and helping develop domestic violence prevention and intervention programs. She has also served as a tutor at Stewart Elementary School in Oxford.

“Annie’s lifelong goal is to become a professor. She’s focused on learning and service,” said William Gracie, chair of Miami’s Rhodes Scholars Committee.

Gracie and other faculty members described her as passionate about ideas and so modest about her intellectual talent that she expressed surprise after making the finals in the Rhodes competition.

To university president James C. Garland, this latest recognition demonstrates just how exceptional Miami's student body is and how committed faculty are to undergraduate education.

Miami is known for the prestigious national and international scholarships its students earn, including the British Marshall, Fulbright, Truman (nine in the last 15 years) and Goldwater (eight in the last six years), he said.

“Miami’s tradition of high academic standards has long attracted some of the best students in the Midwest and the nation,” he said. “The Rhodes sends a message not just about our students, but about our faculty.”

Rhodes Scholarships were created in 1902 to recognize students for their intellectual ability and their personal qualities, including integrity and leadership potential.