Three D.C.-area residents were named Rhodes Scholars on Sunday.
Georgetown graduate Maria Repnikova, the U.S. Naval Academy’s Sean Genis, and Ginger Turner, an employee of the World Bank, all are off to Oxford University after being awarded the prestigious scholarship.
Repnikovaarrived in America from Latvia at 14 without knowing English but immersed herself in language classes and graduated this year from Georgetown University.
“Migration turned my life around,” Repnikova said in a university statement. “I intend to be someone who makes comparable opportunity securely available to the millions of people who in the years ahead must face and cross the borders of our globalized world.”
She has blended an interest in China, after studying in Beijing, with her curiosity about Russia — a subject she was prevented from studying while in Latvia — to produce her current research focus on Chinese immigrant labor in Northeast Russia. She was in China looking into the lives of recent immigrants there when she learned of the honor.
Sean Genis, a native of Sharon, Pa., was a perennial member of the dean’s list at the Navy Academy in Annapolis and is an avid bicyclist.
Turner is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and a native of Galveston, Texas. She works for the World Bank and helped set up the first HIV/AIDS hot line in Kazakhstan. She holds a master’s degree from Stanford.
Thirty-two Americans are awarded Rhodes scholarships every year. The scholarships were endowed by the will of British imperialist and diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes, who hoped to reunify the U.S. and Britain through the scholarships. Rhodes died in 1902.
The scholars were selected from 896 applicants endorsed by 340 colleges and universities, and will join scholars selected from 13 other jurisdictions around the world. The scholarships provide two or three years of study, with the total value averaging about $45,000 per year.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
