Seven JHU students get $50k fellowship

Seven Johns Hopkins University seniors have been selected to receive the first-ever Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Fellowships, which provide up to $50,000 a year for up to six years of graduate studies in the field of their choice. The seven selected fellows from Johns Hopkins are the largest group from any one university. The JHU fellows include Rachel Breman, Suzanna Brickman, Tara Johnson, Andrew O'Bannon, Lora Pearlman, Sarah Spinner and Elizabeth Tuffiash.

Recipients of the fellowships were notified of their selection last month and were honored Wednesday at a media conference at the University of Maryland, College Park. The awardees from Johns Hopkins are among the 50 selected scholars from universities in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.

"Johns Hopkins should be extremely elated over the selection of so many students to receive the most generous scholarship in the nation," said Keith Haller, a spokesman for the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.

Fellows were selected based on leadership, intelligence, academic achievement, critical thinking ability, potential to make significant contributions in their chosen fields and appreciation of the arts and humanities, according to the Foundation's Web site. The Foundation's mission is "to help young people of exceptional promise reach their full potential through education."

"It is such an honor to be in the first class of students receiving the award," said Brickman, a senior political science major who plans to pursue a masters degree in Political Science at the London School of Economics before attending law school. "I am just really grateful."

"I was screaming for joy when I found out," said Pearlman of the phone call she received to notify her of her selection. "It's basically winning the lotto."

Brickman said that she received information about the fellowship through an e-mail last fall from the Office of Academic Advising.

"It was an extensive application and was more intense than any graduate school application I completed," Brickman said. "But it obviously paid off."

The fellows come from diverse backgrounds and areas of study.

Johnson, who will receive degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Music Performance this year, plans to attend the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the fall. Johnson said she would like to specialize in surgery.

Also planning to attend the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is Tuffiash, a cognitive science major. Tuffiash says the fellowship is "the greatest gift someone could give you going into graduate school."

"It's a huge deal for me," said Tuffiash. "All through college I've had two jobs to pay my rent and bills, so having this is definitely going to be helpful."

Breman, a nursing student, will also pursue advanced degrees at Johns Hopkins University in the fall at the School of Nursing and the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Spinner, a double degree major in French and the History of Art, will use her fellowship to attend Yale University where she has been accepted to the joint J.D.-Ph.D program in History.

Spinner has spent five summers interning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and interned last summer at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

"It was exhilarating to play even a small role in the excitement of opening a brand new museum, particularly a Jewish museum in the heart of former Nazi Germany," Spinner wrote.

Pearlman, a biology major, plans to start medical school next year at Vanderbilt University. She says that the fellowship will enable her to pay for medical school without having to take out loans.

Pearlman said that she was able to meet members of the Foundation staff at the media conference Wednesday and she expressed to them her gratitude and excitement about the fellowship.

O'Bannon, a double major in Physics and Writing Seminars, will attend the University of Washington in Seattle in the fall to study particle theory. O'Bannon says that receiving the fellowship made deciding what graduate school to attend much easier.

"Once I won the scholarship, money was no longer at the top of my list," said O'Bannon.

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation was established several years ago upon the death of Mr. Cooke in 1997. The Foundation has more than $500 million in assets and plans to continue the fellowship program for years to come.