Thouron Award scholars announced

Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the Thames - nine students will see it all without paying.

The Thouron Award, a Penn-specific scholarship, was awarded to sophomores, juniors, seniors and graduate students interested in studying in the United Kingdom last month. British students interested in doing graduate work at Penn can also benefit from the scholarship.

John Rupert Thouron and Rachel Thouron Vere Nicoll, grandchildren of the original donor, Sir John Rupert Hunt Thouron, select students for both undergraduate- and graduate-level programs.

For the undergraduate program, students apply through Penn Abroad in the fall of their sophomore or junior year for a scholarship to study at Cambridge University's Pembroke College during the summer, according to Patricia Martin, the associate director of Penn Abroad.

Seniors and graduate students apply for one- to two-year graduate scholarships for the British institution of their choice through the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, said Carole Clarke, chairwoman of the Thouron Committee. Both programs involve application processes in which the Thouron family has the final say.

"The award was started in 1960," Clarke said, but "this year, both the pre-selection committee and the selection committee said that this was an exceptionally-strong group of candidates."

CURF Director Harriet Joseph explained, 75 students applied for the graduate award, 16 were selected by a Penn committee and the final six - Madeleine Evans, Rishabh Jain, Matt Lewandowski, Kojo Minta, Andrew Renuart and Dan Tavana - were selected in February after a rigorous interview process.

Their academic interests and accomplishments are as extensive as they are varied.

College and Wharton senior Madeleine Evans said she will study international development at the London School of Economics and Political Science but is "passionate" about Spanish and Latin America. College senior Dan Tavana will pursue international relations and foreign policy while abroad.

Former undergraduate Thouron winner and College senior Kojo Minta will work toward a Master of Philosophy in modern European history at Oxford University.

The three undergraduate winners - Daily Pennsylvanian city news editor and College sophomore Emily Schultheis, Engineering and Wharton sophomore Prateek Bhide and College sophomore Sean Flanagan - also hope to expand their academic experiences beyond their Penn studies.

Bhide said he wants to diverge from his studies in engineering and business at Penn to study the liberal arts at Cambridge, taking courses in gothic architecture and Shakespeare.

Flanagan said as a transfer student from Northeastern University, he had little chance to study abroad for a semester. While looking at summer Japanese programs, he stumbled upon the Thouron award. A "heavily involved" politics aficionado, he said he will take advantage of "supervision" - traditional one-on-one instruction sessions with a professor.

Despite their enthusiasm - or perhaps because of it - the undergraduate recipients described a lack of publicity surrounding their award.

In contrast, CURF's promotion of the graduate award is "more than we've done before," Joseph said.

However, despite efforts by Penn Abroad's student advisory council, the undergraduate winners said they heard of the award from past recipients.

Both Bhide and Flanagan said that they hope for better publicity so more students can have what Flanagan called an "amazing opportunity."

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