Santa Clara alum, 3 Stanford students named Rhodes scholars
Four of the 32 newly announced American Rhodes scholars have ties to Bay Area universities.
San Jose native and Bellarmine College Preparatory alum Sean Reilly graduated from Santa Clara University, where he studied environmental science and biology, in 2016. And Madeleine Chang of San Francisco, Michael Chen of Boulder, Colorado, and Alexis Kallen of Ventura are seniors at Stanford University.
Launched as a way to promote international understanding and peace, the Rhodes scholarship program annually selects 80 students from around the world from thousands of applicants to pursue two or three years of study at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.
Since the first class of American Rhodes scholars in 1904, some 3,452 Americans have studied at Oxford, including former President Bill Clinton and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
Historically a white boys club, this year, the American scholars include 10 African-Americans, the most of any Rhodes class to date, African and Asian immigrants, Asian, Muslim and Latino Americans, and a transgender man.
Reilly is Santa Clara’s fourth Rhodes scholar.
“This award is a great honor and a fantastic opportunity,” Reilly, currently a Fulbright scholar in Australia, said in a statement. “I am excited to continue the work I began at Santa Clara at Oxford and to become a leader in worldwide environmental change grounded in sound scientific fact.”
He plans to study mathematical modeling, scientific computing, and environmental change and governance at Oxford.
Chang, who speaks Arabic, Spanish and Hebrew in addition to English and directs the American Middle Eastern Network for Dialogue at Stanford, plans to study the social science of the internet. Chen, a chemistry major, will study computer science and neuroscience. Kallen, an advocate against campus sexual assault and the chair of the student group Stanford in Government, will pursue a master’s in development studies.
Another Stanford alum, Jelani Munroe, was also selected as a Rhodes scholar from Jamaica, and also plans to study development studies.