March 25, 2005
Alumna Maile Martinez Named
Gates Cambridge Scholar
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Maile
Martinez ’03 |
Two
years ago, Maile Martinez ’03 packed up her new diploma
and the rest of her possessions and headed west to Phoenix, Arizona,
to take a position as a seventh-grade language arts and social
studies teacher through the Teach for America program.
This
fall she’ll be on the move again, this time bound
for the University of Cambridge as one of a handful of Gates
Cambridge
Scholars chosen from around the world. Much of the credit for
her winning of the coveted scholarship, she said, goes to the
Career
Development Center, and to faculty who helped and supported
her in her bid.
Martinez
had been thinking about what she might do after the end of her
two-year commitment to Teach for America
when she
learned
about the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, founded in 2000 by
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of Seattle, Washington,
to
enable
outstanding graduate students from outside the United Kingdom
to study at Cambridge. Investigating further, Martinez, who
had majored
in Romance languages and literatures and minored in English
at MHC, discovered a one-year master’s program in European
literature and culture that “sounded like it was right
up my alley,” she
said.
To
be eligible for a Gates Scholarship, a candidate must first be
admitted to Cambridge through the usual process. “In
selecting Gates Cambridge Scholars, the trust looks for
students of exceptional
academic achievement and scholarly promise for whom advanced
study at Cambridge would be particularly appropriate,” the
foundation explains on its Web site at http://trust.gatesscholar.org. “The
trustees are required to award scholarships on the basis
of a person's intellectual ability, leadership capacity,
and desire
to use their
knowledge to contribute to society throughout the world
by providing
service to their communities and applying their talents
and knowledge to improve the lives of others.”
Martinez
sought the assistance of Katya King, assistant director
of fellowships and scholarships at the CDC, and,
for her
application to Cambridge, sought letters of recommendation
from Christopher
Rivers, professor of French, and Bill Quillian, Professor
of English on the Emma B. Kennedy Foundation. King provided “a
lot of hard-to-get information about the application process
and what
to expect,” Martinez said. “She has a lot of
contacts and really helped me to prepare.” Rivers
and Quillian, she said, were both “very supportive
and very encouraging,” and
Quillian shared some advice he had gained during his experience
as an undergraduate at Cambridge.
Martinez learned in January that she would be one of
100 candidates interviewed for the available 35 scholarships,
and in early
March headed to Annapolis, Maryland, to meet with the
panel
that would
decide on her application. “I was very nervous—everyone
I met was very highly qualified and extremely motivated,” she
said. But her preparation paid off, and her 20-minute interview
was followed this month by the news that she has become MHC’s
first Gates Scholar, and will be a member of St. John’s
College.
As she prepares to say goodbye to her 60 students in
Phoenix, Martinez is looking forward to an eventual career
as a
professor, “a
huge leadership position from which I can effect social
change.” She
envisions using the power of her position and the knowledge
she’s
gained from her two years in a low-income school district
to encourage her students to participate in community-outreach
programs.
In
the meantime, she hopes to stay connected with her
seventh-grade classes through a Web log she plans to
create. “I really
love my students, and saying goodbye to them is the hardest
thing,” Martinez
said. She hopes that continuing to stay in touch during
her time at Cambridge will encourage them to see themselves
as
the scholars
they may yet become.
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