{"id":24888,"date":"2022-06-15T12:42:53","date_gmt":"2022-06-15T16:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=24888"},"modified":"2022-06-15T12:42:53","modified_gmt":"2022-06-15T16:42:53","slug":"rhodes-scholar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/rhodes-scholar\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Clemson History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Man<\/span>y students <\/span>begin their college careers a bit uncertain abou<\/span>t what direction they might head. The final decision often comes down to determining where their strengths and passions lie.<\/p>\n

As a graduating senior, Louise Franke is still answering that question for herself.<\/span><\/p>\n

She loves the humanities but envisions a career as a physician. A Clemson University Honors College student, she\u2019s majoring in biochemistry but points to a political theory class her freshman year as life-changing, resulting in a minor in philosophy and political science. She has done research in the EPIC (Eukaryotic Pathogens Innovation Center) laboratory while participating in both the Lyceum Program, which requires a political philosophy class each semester and biweekly Socratic sessions with a professor, and the Dixon Global Policy Scholars program, which brings students from different majors together to discuss and dissect broader policy issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

She hasn\u2019t wanted to close the door to any of those interests. And it has served her well.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since 2006, Clemson has had six Rhodes finalists. This year, Franke has made history by being named the University\u2019s first-ever Rhodes Scholar \u2014 one of 32 American students to receive the scholarship.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Rhodes Scholarship is recognized worldwide as the top award for undergraduates. Scholars are selected through an intensive application and interview process and then spend two years at the University of Oxford, where Franke plans to pursue a B.A. in philosophy, politics and economics before earning a joint M.D. and Ph.D. in bioethics. Her goal is to practice as a physician while forging a career as a bioethicist in the public policy and academic realms.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Rhodes community is an intellectual community where people care about ideas, about action and about the world,\u201d said Franke. \u201cIt\u2019s a group of people that fight the world\u2019s fight, and the fact that I\u2019m now part of that blows my mind. It\u2019s a dream come true.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Rhodes community is an intellectual community where people care about ideas, about action and about the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Franke points to her first class in the Lyceum program with assistant professor Michael Hoffpauir as causing \u201ca slight existential crisis.\u201d In Franke\u2019s only non-science course that semester, she was reading Plato, Aristotle (\u201call that kind of great ancient stuff\u201d). She said she was \u201cnodding along, writing my essays, but nothing was jarring to me.\u201d But reading Machiavelli\u2019s The Prince<\/i> made her stop and think. Then she read Frederick Nietzsche\u2019s On the Genealogy of Morals.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cI was just like, \u2018What does this all mean?\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cHow could I not be studying Nietzsche for the rest of my life? I don\u2019t understand it all, but what I do understand makes me know I have to understand more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoffpauir remembers Franke delving into subjects such as justice and considering what it means \u201cfor her \u2014 for caring for herself and for her caring for others. She became keenly aware that doing so requires her to work through her unexamined opinions and any bias she might have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Franke described that class as a \u201chuge moment,\u201d one she credits for pushing her to apply to the Hudson Institute Political Studies program in Washington, D.C., an experience she called \u201cmy favorite six weeks of my life.\u201d Mornings consisted of three-hour seminars with 18 other students and a professor (\u201clike the best professors in the country,\u201d she said); afternoons, they met different influential figures (\u201cWe met Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That was amazing.\u201d) and participated in policy workshops.<\/p>\n

But when asked what she\u2019s most passionate about, Franke gets less academic. \u201cIt sounds super cheesy,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I think helping people more than anything.\u201d She said the main thing she\u2019s learned about herself is that she doesn\u2019t want a job that is not constantly interacting with people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think my goal is to go to med school right now. But I\u2019m very, very open to something else happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clemson\u2019s first Rhodes Scholar reflects on formative moments and her future in the program<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":24889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[720,1833,2405,2827,2834],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-24888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-these-hills","tag-clemson-university-honors-college","tag-lyceum-program","tag-rhodes-scholar","tag-summer-2022","tag-summer-2022-in-these-hills"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2022\/06\/Rhodes-Scholar-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24888"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=24888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}