Overseas student awards to be announced online.
One of our criteria is social leadership so these are not just strong academic individuals – they are very hands-on individuals and are very much people we see as future leaders.
Mandy Garner of Gates Cambridge
Overseas student awards will now be announced online rather than in special editions of the Reporter.
The websites of the trusts which grant the awards will now carry the news. The University has two major overseas awards given to exceptional students – the Gates Cambridge and the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust.
The move allows the news to be presented in the most appropriate place and in much greater detail than previously.
Mandy Garner, communications officer for the programme, said: “We give a lot of details of the scholarships and scholars themselves on our website. I speak to a selection of students so we can tell their story on the site. They are a remarkable group of people.”
Gates Scholars, who are all postgraduates, have a place in a University department already before they are selected for the award.
“The departments identify the best students for consideration and we then interview them. They are really interesting in terms of what they have done and their various backgrounds. One of our criteria is social leadership so these are not just strong academic individuals – they are very hands-on individuals and are very much people we see as future leaders.”
One such person is Lizzie Presser, A New York born academic who studied the ancient world at university but has since set up an influential online news service on the present-day problems in north-east Thailand.
Just days after graduating from Princeton she headed to Thailand and within months had started filing reports on growing and under-reported protests in the northeast for a free and fair election and a transparent judicial system.
She has now branched out into solutions-based journalism in the US and is finishing working on a book on anti-poverty programmes with two Pulitzer prize-winning US journalists.
Her belief is this could be an important direction for future journalism and her MPhil in Public Policy, which she begins at the University of Cambridge in October, will broaden her interests in social policy further.
“When I speak to the scholars, those starting up and those who have already graduated, I am amazed by their stories. I think the web site is a great place for people to be inspired and a site for future scholars to use as a resource,” said Mandy.
The Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust was established on 1 August 2013 and was formed from the merger of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust and the Cambridge Overseas Trust.
It has made 515 new awards to students from 71 countries. It offers awards to selected students at PhD, Masters and undergraduate level in all subjects.
The aim of the Trust is to enable candidates of outstanding academic merit, who would not otherwise be able to take up places at Cambridge, to pursue courses of study or research.