African-American Student at Indiana University Selected as a Rhodes Scholar

A Rhodes Scholarship is the most prestigious award given to college students. Winners of the Rhodes Scholarship receive an all-expenses-paid graduate education at Oxford University in England.

This year 309 colleges and universities across the United States nominated 837 students for a Rhodes Scholarship. While the Rhodes Trust does not divulge the race of scholarship winners, it appears that there is only one African American among the 32 students selected to be Rhodes Scholars. In 2009 there were four blacks among the 32 winners.

Esther Uduehi, a senior at Indiana University in Bloomington, was selected for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. Uduehi, who was valedictorian at Reitz High School in Evansville, Indiana, is majoring in chemistry and mathematics. She has maintained  a 3.93 grade point average as an undergraduate at Indiana University. Her parents emigrated from Nigeria in 1988, a year before she was born.

Uduehi spent one semester during her junior year studying at Oxford. She will return there next fall to pursue a graduate degree. She plans for a career in medicinal chemistry research.

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