Title:Eight Hoyas named Marshall and Rhodes Scholars

2024 was a banner year for Georgetown and the Center for Research and Fellowships (CRF) with five Marshall Scholar wins and three Rhodes Scholar wins.

The CRF identifies strong candidates for these highly competitive awards, then supports them in their application efforts.

According to CRF Director Lauren Tuckley (G’11), the key to their success is creating a peer community, despite the fact that they are competing against each other.

“I come at this process with an ethos that says ‘if you can’t help somebody else and imagine how their success is as important, if not more than yours, you can’t win,’” says Tuckley. “And so we create an atmosphere that decentralizes the competition. In doing that, we center their development.”

Even if a student doesn’t win the scholarship, they are rewarded with cohorts who push them to be their best. The CRF helps them form friendships and a future alumni network.

Each year, about 100 to 200 applicants show interest in applying, and 50 to 60 apply for nomination. Last year, CRF nominated 20 students and young alumni, but they want to work with even more.

“I think our value is not necessarily the fact that eight people won,” says Tuckley. “Our value is in the people who come through this office: they are using their talents, intellectual interests, and expertise in service of a greater purpose.”

The five Marshall Scholars are Adrian Ali-Caccamo (SFS’24), who plans to address inequity in U.S. education; Hari Choudhari (SFS’24), who plans to build peace in the U.S. by giving voice to victims and local communities; Naomi Greenberg (C’24), who plans to understand and contribute to the field of genetics; Michael Lundgren (SFS’22), who plans to study disparities in early childhood education, and Anya Wahal (SFS’23), who plans to become an academic practitioner in water policy management.

The three Rhodes Scholarship recipients are Thomas Batterman (C’22), a researcher who investigates war crimes at the Department of Justice and who made new discoveries about a medieval plague while at Georgetown; Zhicheng (Charlie) Wang (SFS’22), a technology policy researcher and Schwarzman Scholar; and Asma Shakeel (SFS’24), a senior who researches missionary history in South Asia.