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For 2005 Rhodes Scholar Jeremy Farris, going to college isn't about getting good grades and a job. College is about the experience of education and an opportunity to expand the mind.
"The purpose of an education isn't to get you a job," said Farris, a senior in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Ivan Allen College. "The purpose of an education is to change you to make you sufficiently human."
The Rhodes Scholarships are the oldest international fellowships in the world and widely regarded as the most prestigious. The scholarships pay for two or three years of study at Oxford University. This year, 32 American students along with students from 22 other countries are being chosen for their academic achievement, personal integrity and potential for leadership to become Rhodes Scholars.
Before coming to Tech in 2000 as a Stamps Family President's Scholar, the Bonaire, GA. native won a best of category award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for his discovery of a new pathogen that can control the invasive plant kudzu. As a result of the award, he was chosen to become an American delegate to the 2000 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Science Forum in Singapore. The trip inspired him to travel to Argentina on a study abroad trip the following summer, where he produced a documentary on the indigenous people of that country. These experiences eventually led to him changing his major from biology to international affairs.
Since then he has conducted research on the possibilities for post-Castro democratization in Cuba and traveled to Guatemala to work on reforestation projects and collect footage for a documentary on illegal immigration networks. All three study abroad trips were funded in part by a Reginald S. Fleet International Scholarship, which provides approximately forty students a year with stipends for study overseas.
"We need to think of education as something very real and important in itself," said Farris. "Georgia Tech can no longer be considered just a math, science and engineering institution."
Farris will receive his bachelor's in international affairs in December 2004. He'll begin a two-year master's of philosophy program in political theory at Oxford October 2005. He is the third Georgia Tech student to receive a Rhodes Scholarship. | 