Two students with ties to Illinois are among this year’s class of Rhodes Scholars headed to Oxford University next year on the coveted scholarship.
Among this year’s class are Oklahoma-raised University of Chicago student Tori Harris and Duke University student William Lieber, of Springfield, Illinois. Two University of Chicago students were among last year’s class, as well as a Barrington-born student.
Oxford University’s 122-year-old scholarship program for American students covers tuition, fees and other expenses along with a stipend of more than $26,000 a year. The scholarship totals more than $75,000 annually, and it can be extended for a four-year stay at the school.
Nearly 3,000 students from 243 U.S. schools applied for the scholarship. Sixteen selection committees across the nation then interviewed 238 finalists before picking the final 32.
Lieber, who transferred to Duke from Illinois Wesleyan University, is pursuing masters degrees in criminology and criminal justice, as well as education.
He has taken on leadership roles with educational programs in North Carolina prisons and on an interview team working with victims of gun violence in Durham to inform local policy reforms. Lieber has also worked as an EMT and restorative justice facilitator.
Harris is currently working on her thesis, which uses artifacts she recovered from the Woodland Plantation in Louisiana during an excavation this past summer to weave a narrative of history. Her first archaeological experiences were on an excavation of landmarks associated with the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
“History is, in some sense, a creative discipline because you don’t always know the exact facts of everything that happened,” Harris said. “And especially in archaeology, it’s very difficult to find the exact facts from the fragments we find in the ground. So, there’s a creative process that comes with it.”
Harris plans to pursue a master’s of science in African studies and archaeology at Oxford next fall, an extension of her focus of using archaeology to recover African American culture, history and life as it faces erasure.
“I’m excited to be given this opportunity to study what I love at Oxford,” Harris said in a statement. “I’m hoping to do right by the people who set me on this journey as I move forward in my work.”