December 12, 2018

Nine Princeton University Scholars Win Coveted International Awards

By Donald Gilpin

Joining the distinguished ranks of Princeton University’s four 2019 Rhodes Scholars were three recent winners of Marshall Scholarships for graduate study in the U.K., four Schwarzman Scholarships for study in Beijing, a Mitchell Scholarship winner who will be studying in Ireland, and a Rangel Fellowship winner for graduate work in international affairs.

Princeton 2017 alumnus Ararat Gocmen and seniors Jonah Herzog-Arbeitman and Myrial Holbrook have been named Marshall Scholars for 2019, members of a group of 48 chosen from more than 1,000 applicants.

Gocmen, a history major from Bergen County, N.J., has been working since graduation as an analyst in the Portfolio Analytics Group at BlackRock. He will attend University College London (UCL) to pursue an M.Sc. in economics and a master’s degree in the history of political thought and intellectual history, jointly administered by UCL and Queen Mary University of London.

At Princeton, Gocmen, who looks forward to a career as a history professor, was co-founder and president of the Princeton Armenian Society, captain of the Princeton Federal Reserve Challenge Team, and served in editorial roles at The Princeton Progressive and Princeton Historical Review. He won the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence, the Laurence Hutton Prize for history, and the Andre Maman Prize for his senior thesis.

Herzog-Arbeitman, a physics major from Northampton, Mass., who is working toward certificates in applied and computational mathematics and creative writing, will pursue an M.Sc. in theoretical and mathematical physics at the University of Oxford in his first year, then move to the University of Nottingham to work towards an M.Phil.

Both a physicist and a poet, Herzog-Arbeitman earned several awards from the physics department at Princeton and is also a member of Princeton’s humanistic studies society, and received the Sophomore Award in Poetry from the Lewis Center for the Arts in 2017. 

Holbrook, a comparative literature major from Lewis Center, Ohio, will be seeking an M.Phil. in education, focusing on critical approaches to children’s literature, at the University of Cambridge. This will be followed by an M. Litt. in creative writing at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. 

Holbrook, who looks forward to eventually earning her Ph.D. in comparative literature and continuing to write creatively, particularly children’s literature, has traveled widely and participated in a range of international programs. She spent the fall semester of her junior year at University College London and last summer completed her senior thesis research in London at the archives of the Dickens Museum. 

Awarded the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence in 2017, Holbrook has served as managing editor of Innovation, Princeton’s student-led science organization, and as a student adviser on the Campus Dining Advisory Board. She is also a staff writer for the Nassau Literary Review, editor of Tortoise, and a volunteer with Community House Big Sibs Program. 

Schwarzman Scholars

Heading to Beijing after graduation for a one-year master’s program in economics, business, international studies, and public policy taught in English at Tsinghua University will be Princeton seniors Paul Greenbaum, Esham Macauley, Amanda Morrison, and Rebekah Ninan. These Schwarzman Scholarship winners join a class of 147 students selected from more than 2,800 applicants from around the world.

Greenbaum, a Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs major from Boiling Springs, Pa., is working towards certificates in African studies and diplomacy and will be pursuing studies in post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction. 

A midshipman in Princeton’s joint Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program with Rutgers University, Greenbaum looks forward to commissioning as a surface warfare officer, nuclear propulsion option. 

At Princeton he has received an award for outstanding independent work in the Woodrow Wilson School and a grant to pursue research for his thesis on the impact of China investment in sub-Saharan Africa. He is an undergraduate fellow with Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies and has participated in language immersion programs in India and Tanzania, and in Princeton’s PIIRS Global Seminar in Beijing. Greenbaum is also co-captain of Princeton’s men’s varsity water polo team.

Macauley, a Lawrence Township, N.J., politics major, who is also seeking certificates in African studies and East Asian studies, plans to explore relations between China and Africa. 

He has interned at Barclay’s Investment Bank and Kybora Emerging Markets and received a J.P. Morgan Chase Sophomore Development Fellowship. He participated in Beijing Normal University’s Mandarin Immersion Program and is cofounder and president of Princeton’s China Social Impact Project. 

Macauley is president of Princeton’s Black Men’s Student Association and former outreach director of the African Students Association.

Morrison, Woodrow Wilson School major from Helena, Mont., earning certificates in East Asian studies and visual arts (film production), looks forward to studying developments in the Chinese feminist movement and plans to work on visual storytelling and political affairs. She is completing a documentary on the work of Chinese feminist Li Maizi. 

Morrison is a recipient of the Mallach Senior Thesis Fund from the Lewis Center for the Arts, where she is a film editing teaching assistant. She completed the Chinese language immersion program Princeton in Beijing and worked as a legal intern at the U.S. Asia Law Institute in New York City. She is president of 1080princeton, a student visual journalism organization; a student leader on Vote100; and a magazine editor for Business Today.

Ninan, a politics major from Franklin, Tenn., earning a certificate in South Asian studies, plans to study economic and diplomatic relations between China and South Asia. 

She has worked as a research fellow for the program on Religion, Diplomacy, and International Relations and for the project on Gender in the Global Community.

Ninan has interned for UNICEF and Legacies of War; and as an intern for the U.S. Department of State she did research for the Bureau of Population, Refugee, and Migration, Asia Team. She has also worked with the State Department’s Office of Pakistan Affairs.  

A 2018 Liman Undergraduate Fellow, Ninan has served as president of the American Whig-Cliosophic Society and director of the Adlai Tournament for the Princeton Debate Panel.  She is a residential college adviser for Wilson College.

Mitchell Scholar

Recently named as one of only 12 George J. Mitchell Scholars, Princeton senior Anabel Barry will be studying philosophy and literature next year at University College Dublin (UCD). The Southport, Conn., English major, also pursuing certificates in European cultural studies, humanistic studies, and theater, plans to pursue a Ph.D. in literature after completing her master’s at UCD. She looks forward to being a literary critic and nonfiction writer with a career in academia.

Barry was a Princeton Breadloaf Fellow at Oxford University this past summer. She has worked as a set designer on productions at the Lewis Center for the Arts, at Theatre Intime, and at the Princeton Shakespeare Company. She has won the George B. Wood Legacy Junior Prize for academic achievement, the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence, and several awards from the Princeton English department.

Barry is co-editor-in-chief of the Nassau Literary Review, a fellow in the Writing Center, the undergraduate coordinator of the Princeton chapter of Minorities and Philosophy, and a peer academic advisor at Whitman College.

Rangel Fellowship

Michael Wisner, politics major from Polk, Pa., with a specialization in international relations and anticipated certificates in African studies, history and diplomacy, Latin American studies, and Spanish language and culture, has been named a 2019 Rangel Fellow.

He will begin a two-year graduate program next fall with an internship on Capitol Hill or overseas at a U.S. embassy or consulate, and then join the State Department Foreign Service. 

A U.S. State Department program administered by Howard University, the Rangel Fellowship grants recipients up to $37,500 each year for academic studies and living expenses and up to $10,000 each summer for internship-related support. 

Wisner has interned as a teacher for the Ashinaga Africa Initiative in Uganda, and he has had a summer internship with the U.S. Department of State in Tanzania. He has also spent a summer in Greece and a semester in Argentina as an ESL instructor. Since 2016 he has taught ESL at the Resource Center of Catholic Charities in Trenton.