Mount Holyoke Senior Among 40 In U.S. to Receive Prestigious Marshall Scholarship

For immediate release
December 11, 2002

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. ­ Rachel Brulé, a senior at Mount Holyoke College, is one of 40 American students to receive a Marshall Scholarship for graduate study in Britain.

This is the second prestigious scholarship that Brulé, an international relations and African studies double major from Fayetteville, New York, has won in the space of a year. Last spring, she received a Truman Scholarship, an award of $30,000 for graduate school leading to a career in government or public service.

Marshall Scholarships, which reward intellectual distinction and leadership potential, are worth about $60,000 and are financed by the British government. The scholarship will enable Brulé to pursue a master of science degree in forced migration at Oxford University's Refugee Study Center beginning in the fall of 2003. During the 2004­2005 academic year, she will earn a second master of science degree, this time in development management, at the Development Studies Institute of the London School of Economics. Brulé then plans to return to native soil to work for a nongovernmental organization, perhaps the Carter Center, for a few years before putting her Truman Scholarship to use, pursuing a doctorate in public policy, and later securing a regional posting with an international organization such as the World Bank or the United Nations.

"My ultimate goal is an appointment to a U.S. presidential administration that would allow me to realize my dream of advising and enacting U.S. foreign policy toward the developing world," Brulé says.

Ralph Faulkingham, the chair of the anthropology department at the University of Massachusetts, has the highest praise for Brulé, with whom he has worked closely through the Five College Exchange. "Rachel's combination of insightfulness, humanity, and intelligence are wonderful and rare," he says. "She ranks among the top five students I have worked with in thirty years of teaching."

Brulé is the eighth Mount Holyoke student to receive a Marshall since the scholarship's founding in 1957. Among the MHC winners is Elizabeth Topham Kennan '60, president of Mount Holyoke from 1978 to 1995, who was awarded the scholarship during her senior year and attended Oxford University. The most recent MHC recipient before Brulé was Julianya Jay in 2000.