Three Cornell students, in different fields of study, are among a select few American recipients of the prestigious Rhodes and Marshall scholarships announced Dec. 8.
Two of the students won both the Rhodes and the Marshall scholarships and, having a choice of only one, picked the Rhodes. They are: Jonathan Levine, majoring in physics, and Jessika Trancik, majoring in materials science and engineering. The third student, Rafael Cox, a College Scholar with an emphasis in history, won the Marshall Scholarship. They are all seniors.
The three 1997 Marshall Scholarships for Cornell is the second highest number at a university in the United States this year. Only Harvard University, with seven, had more. And for the first time in Cornell's history, the university has more than one Rhodes Scholar in a year. Cornell, with two Rhodes Scholarships, had the third highest number, behind Harvard's five and Georgetown University's three. Yale University and the University of Notre Dame also had two each. There were 32 Rhodes Scholars selected in the United States this year out of 990 applicants from 323 colleges and universities, and between 30 and 40 Marshall Scholarships.
"I congratulate Jessika, Jonathan and Rafael, who exemplify the quality of the student body at Cornell," President Hunter Rawlings said. "These awards are not only a confirmation of their academic excellence, but also are an outgrowth of this university's continued emphasis on undergraduate education and its integration with research. These honors, and the recent Nobel prize awarded to two Cornell professors and a former graduate student in physics, are a testament to the collaborative efforts of students and faculty at Cornell."
Rafael Cox, from Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, has focused his studies on the past -- and set his sights on the future. The College Scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences, who has concentrated on Latin American and European history, hopes someday to influence the future of his native country.
For the present, Cox, president of Cornell's Puerto Rican Students Association, is on the dean's list for his college.
He will be returning to Oxford University for his Marshall Scholarship, after having spent his junior year there as part of the Cornell Abroad program, specializing in British history. His thesis at Oxford was titled "A Case Study in British De-Colonization Policy: Kenya's Road Toward Independence," and it was completed under the supervision of a renowned British authority on the topic, Dr. John Darwin of Nuffield College at Oxford. While at Oxford, Cox also was a member of the Oxford University Ballroom Dancing Team and the university's Latino Association.
The senior credits his advisers at Cornell, Thomas Holloway, professor of Latin American history, and Vilma Santiago-Irizarry, assistant professor of anthropology in the Latino Studies Program, with helping him define his areas of interest as a College Scholar. "They represent role models for me for my future academics," he said.
Santiago-Irizarry is a member, and Holloway is chairman, of Cox's thesis committee. Santiago-Irizarry and Arcadio Diaz, professor of Romance languages at Princeton University, recommended him for the Marshall Scholarship. He also credits his College Scholar adviser, E. Wood Kelly, professor of government and director of undergraduate studies for the department, with helping him in the application process.
Cox's senior honors thesis for the College Scholar program is titled "Towards New Post-Colonial Societies? Politics and War in Turn of the Century Cuba and Puerto Rico." "I'm trying to analyze the Spanish American War from the point of view of the colonies and how the internal societies of Cuba and Puerto Rico changed and were modified as a result of the war," he said.
Santiago-Irizarry describes Cox as a "truly outstanding student and person."
"I met him in my first semester here, in 1994, when he was a sophomore, and was quite impressed with his potential from the outset," she said. "As I pointed out in my letter of recommendation, one of the pleasures I've had over the course of the last two years is to witness how Rafael has fulfilled the high expectations he raised in me when we first met. Key to Rafael's excellence is his sense of civic purpose and responsibility toward Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, be they here in the United States or on the island, however old-fashioned that might sound nowadays. He's not into going for higher education for the purpose of obtaining little pieces of paper that will bring him upward mobility and high salaries. He genuinely feels that one owes one's community and that membership in it brings with it the commitment to contribute to its well-being."
This is evident, she said, in Cox's research. "He is currently re-examining the Spanish American War because he wants to restore the Cuban and Puerto Rican perspective into the war's historical narrative, which has been dominated by the United States and its colonizing goals," she said. "Likewise, Rafael's interest in decolonization processes is shaped by the need to re-evaluate Puerto Rico's current relationship with the United States."
As a Latino student leader, she said, "Rafael has been an articulate, expressive and measured contributor to campus political debates. And along with the reasonable demeanor he displays and intelligent analyses he produces, he treats others with great politeness, consideration and charm."
Cox's choice to come to Cornell was influenced, he said, by a cousin who earned a Ph.D. here 10 years ago in linguistics and also by the university's academic and physical setting. "I thought Cornell would be a place where I could get in contact with quite a diverse intellectual community, within a peaceful and beautiful environment."
The two figures who have most influenced his life's path, he said, have been his father, who is a cardiologist, and his uncle, who has a PhD. in chemistry. "My father is kind of a Renaissance man, and he always influenced me to combine academics with public service," Cox said. "He is my role model. He's a man who has excelled in his profession, and he has mixed the academic world with the practical world."
"When I heard about the Marshall Scholarship, I was excited," Cox said, "but then I felt an immense sense of gratitude to the people who have helped me over the years. And I also felt a strong sense of responsibility that came with the award to contribute to society."
His past already has been filled with honors. He was a Mellon Summer Research Fellow at Princeton University this past summer, where he studied the Spanish American War and its influence on the relationship between the United States and the Caribbean, and he was an American Bar Foundation scholar in Chicago in the summer of 1995.
Cox will be working on a D.Phil. degree in modern history during his two-year Marshall Scholarship at Oxford. He plans to study British decolonization policy and how it can be used as a reference point to analyze the current political situation in Puerto Rico. In the future, he said, he wants to go to law school, where he hopes to combine a study of the law with a study of history.
"I feel they are interrelated," he said. "It's very important for the historian to realize the relation of the law in shaping our future and our past."
Jonathan Levine of Merion Station, Pa., came to Cornell to become an engineer, but soon realized he wanted to be a scientist. So he switched to the College of Arts and Sciences his sophomore year to major in physics.
"I loved science. I just wanted to study science," he said. "And I thought, 'If you love science so much, switch to science.' So I did."
Professors soon noticed a natural gift. Levine could handle all the equations and formulas, no problem. But he was interested in a deeper understanding, more so than many of his peers, faculty members say.
"Jonathan told me last spring semester he wasn't satisfied with his knowledge of quantum mechanics," said Louis Hand, professor of physics who was one of several to recommend Levine for the scholarship. "I knew what he meant, because I don't understand it myself. In fact, nobody does. These are things we don't know about."
Hand suggested that Levine take an independent study course so they could investigate the mysteries of quantum mechanics, "which often are ignored in the professional courses." So Levine now is investigating the Aharanov-Bohm Effect, in which a charged particle can be affected by fields it never encounters. Until about a decade ago, it was thought that this effect does not exist.
"This is not the normal material you get in quantum mechanics," said Hand.
One of Levine's earlier physics classes was Physics 318, Analytical Mechanics, with Hand. "It's a very difficult course. Only the best students take it. He was one of the outstanding students," Hand recalled. "I invited him last year to be one of two TAs (teaching assistants). He was quite marvelous. He had to interact with students, some of whom were taking other classes with him. It could have been very uncomfortable, but it wasn't. People that age often are very immature about their intellect. But not Jonathan. He has a lot of self-confidence."
But more important, in addition to his grasp of the science, there was his humanism, Hand said. "He has a remarkable maturity and a depth of insight I've never seen in a student this age. He is an unusually brilliant guy, but very sensitive. He doesn't flaunt his intellect. He's very humanistic and is always aware of what other people are thinking. And he's always happy."
Vaclav Kostroun, associate professor of applied and engineering physics in the College of Engineering, had Levine in one of Levine's first classes. "I noticed immediately Jonathan's answers on exams were clear, lucid, all on one line. I offered him a job that summer to work in my lab on a low-energy spectrometer."
Douglas B. Fitchen, chairman and professor of physics, said: "He's an articulate, poised person. He's not the typical physics student, who tends to be somewhat reserved. He's an amazing person. He does a lot of things and all of them well. He's a natural ambassador."
Levine also worked one summer for Philip Nicholson, professor of astronomy. That was the summer of 1994, and a broken-up comet was on a collision course for Jupiter. Levine helped Nicholson with the imaging of Comet Shoemaker-Levy as it smashed into the planet. Levine liked the experience so much, he signed up for Nicholson's planetary physics course last year, a junior in a graduate-level class.
Levine said he and Jessika Trancik were somewhat surprised by their awards, because "we thought the possibility was extremely remote that we would both win, more so than the odds of any other pair of candidates winning, because we were both from Cornell and both scientists."
Levine is now interested in geophysics. He spent last summer at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, where he studied how the rigid body motions of the Earth are affected by the gravitational pull of other planets, which can be responsible for climate change. He is interested in the Ice Ages -- specifically, the processes that periodically cause sheets of ice thousands of square miles wide and a mile thick to bury much of Europe and North America. At Oxford, he said, "I hope to get broad-based experience in geoscience -- in tectonics, stritigraphy, geodesy and geodynamics."
He credits his Cornell professors -- not only the physicists, but others such as Paul Hyams, associate professor of history; Philip Nicholson, professor of astronomy; and Ross Brann, professor and chair of Near Eastern Studies -- with making it possible for him to earn the scholarship. "I want to send thanks to all my instructors here at Cornell who have taken the time to reach out and involve undergraduates in research. It made a big difference in my time here. Thank you."
And he credits his parents -- his father, a public defender, and his mother, an administrator at a health care facility -- with helping him develop a social conscience. "My parents pushed me to excel in all fields. They taught me to pursue my strengths," he said.
In addition to his academic interests, Levine is involved in music at Cornell and in the community. Attending Jewish day school and high school, he learned to chant from the Torah in elementary school and was soon chanting every week at his local synagogue. While at Cornell, he served as the cantor, the liturgical leader, at Temple Beth-El in Ithaca during the Jewish high holidays.
With no formal voice training, Levine took two music courses at Cornell and is on the Faculty Committee on Music.
But it was a professor of German Studies, Arthur Groos, who got Levine thinking about the scholarships. Levine took his course in opera and culture last spring and Groos suggested this fall that Levine might make a good candidate for the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships.
"I had never really considered these, until Professor Groos suggested that I would make a good candidate. Then, I came up with a program of study which I was qualified to undertake at Oxford, but which would also be largely new for me. Oxford affords me the opportunity for a lot of additional background and a great deal of new experiences. I'm really very excited."
Between the base line and the net, Jessika Trancik, of Ithaca, absorbed lessons in tennis that she now applies to everyday life.
"Ed Moylan is a friend and world-class tennis player who taught me to play the ball, not my opponent or anything else around me," Trancik said. "He taught me lessons that'll keep with me my whole life."
In short, he showed Jessika how to focus, not just on tennis but on life lessons. Trancik, learned last Saturday night that she was one of 32 American students named to receive Rhodes Scholarships. "It's a great honor, but I'm still the same person," she said.
Trancik explained that those lessons about remembering your strengths and playing the ball helped her as an engineering student facing stiff competition for the prestigious scholarship.
As a senior majoring in materials science and engineering, she already is party to two patent disclosures and has presented her work at national professional society meetings. In addition to her research here, she has done work in applied physics at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden, at Intel Corp. and in Cornell's modern languages department, and she is fluent in Swedish and proficient in Italian, Spanish and German.
With an extremely rigorous academic course load, engineering majors do not typically vie for Rhodes scholarships. "The questions at the Rhodes interview were not technical," she said. "They were questions about language, the arts, current events and explaining my work to non-scientists. I have strong interests in these areas and my essay focused on tying them -- within the context of my life -- together."
Trancik explained that the Rhodes committee sought students with broad experiences, intellect, physical vigor, service and leadership. With Trancik, those qualities were not hard to find: She serves as president of Cornell's Alpha Sigma Mu chapter, the national materials honor society; she is a member of Tau Beta Pi, a national engineering honor society, and the Materials Research Society. She is a member of the Cornell Scandinavian Club, and she played on the varsity women's tennis team before she joining the ski team.
The road to her Rhodes Scholarship was paved with helping hands -- from her parents, professors, academic advisers and her friends. She doesn't want to forget them, she said.
Among the many people who helped her included her academic adviser and mentor, Stephen Sass, professor of materials science and engineering; Mary J. Sansalone, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering; Henry Shue, the Wyn and William Y. Hutchinson professor of ethics and public life; Mark Landon; the Townsend professor of classics; William Streett, professor of civil and environmental engineering; Jacqueline Soltys, Cornell fellowships coordinator; Engineering Dean John Hopcroft; the many people who provided kind letters on her behalf; and, her parents Lena Trancik, senior lecturer in modern languages, and Roger T. Trancik, professor of landscape architecture. And she said her grandparents have inspired her to strive to fulfill her dreams, through their accomplishments and strength.
Sass, Trancik's adviser, who started her on her research career, said she is extraordinarily talented.
"It takes a remarkably broad person to win a Rhodes. You have to be academically strong, and having worked for three years in research gave Jessika a lot of valuable experiences -- in hands-on experimentation, overcoming adversity and communication. It's very rare for an engineer to get a Rhodes Scholarship. Jessika did a lot of undergraduate research, beyond most engineering students, but even with that, to win a Rhodes you have to have broad interests in politics and in history. Jessika also had a very strong pull toward arts and languages."
Trancik's undergraduate research experience started early. She began with materials science research the summer after her freshman year and then continued during the following academic year and summer, before taking off for a co-op semester at Intel, Sass said.
"In research you've got to be very smart, hard-working, and you have to be able to focus on getting something done in a short period of time," he said. "Jessika has that ability."
She began her senior honors thesis early, halfway through her junior year. Titled "Characterization of Thin Metal Ceramic Films for Magnetic Applications," it is on the use of thin films for magnetic information storage, a subject on which she already has co-authored a scientific paper.
Trancik's life lessons allowed her to focus not only on personal achievement, but also on notable academic achievement. Her honors include: Barry M. Goldwater National Scholarship; USA Today Academic All-Star Team in 1996; Outstanding Scholar Award of the American Society of Metals; Class of 1997 John McMullen Dean's Scholar in the College of Engineering; TMS Presidential Scholar for 1997; and she is the recipient of a GE Foundation Faculty for the Future Undergraduate Research Experiences Program Grant.
"The Rhodes scholarship will allow me to broaden myself," she said. "There are many parallels between art and science; both seek to understand the elements. Art does this through expression, while science does this through probing or understanding properties. And both involve creativity. They're still separate fields. I will make a conscious effort not to lose art or language, while I pursue a career in academia."
Some history from the University Career Center:
Jessika Trancik is the fourth woman from Cornell to win a Rhodes. The last woman Rhodes Scholar from Cornell was ten years ago, Donna Jean Roberts, who won in 86-87. There has been only one other Engineer Rhodes Scholar since 1960 (which is as far back as winners' majors/colleges are tracked), Kenneth C. Brown, who won in 1974-75. Jessika Trancik is, however, the first woman Engineer to win a Rhodes from Cornell.
Jessika Trancik is the fourth New Yorker to win a Rhodes from Cornell, but the first since 1937.
Until now, Cornell has never won more than a single Rhodes in any given year and has never had any student win both a Rhodes and a Marshall.