05
December
2006
|
18:00 PM
America/New_York

Ohio State senior awarded prestigious Marshall Scholarship

Ohio State senior Yoonhee Patricia Ha, of Proctorville, is one of 43 students nationwide selected as a 2007 Marshall Scholar. She is the first Ohio State student chosen for the prestigious scholarship since 1997, and the only Ohio State student ever to have won both the Marshall and the Harry S. Truman Scholarship.

The highly competitive Marshall Scholarship provides the winners with two years of study at the British university of their choice, courtesy of the British government. The program began in 1953 as a gesture of thanks to the people of the United States for the assistance received after World War II under the Marshall Plan.

Ha is double-majoring in microbiology and finance, with minors in Korean and political science. She plans to pursue graduate and professional studies in public health and medicine and use her training to work as a doctor for the underserved in the United States and in developing countries.

As a Marshall Scholar in 2007, she will go to the University of London's School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to study public health.

Ha says she feels fortunate to be selected. "I am grateful to God, my family, my friends, and the countless number of people at Ohio State who helped to make this dream a reality. If anything, the whole experience helped me to realize how fortunate I am to be a Buckeye," she said.

"There were so many people who gave up their precious time to read over my application, write letters of recommendation, sit on mock interview panels, accommodate my travel schedule, and just encourage me."

She has been the recipient of 26 merit scholarships, including the Harry S. Truman Scholarship and the Walter M. Rudin Junior Scholarship (presented to the most outstanding junior in Ohio State's Fisher College of Business).

She serves as undergraduate student representative on the Ohio State University Board of Trustees, and is a research assistant in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Caligiuri, in the College of Medicine Division of Hematology and Oncology. She has led a number of programs and events at Ohio State and has completed an internships at the American Cancer Society as a policy research intern and worked at the National East Asian Languages Resource Center as an editor.

Last summer, she volunteered in Kibera, Kenya, with an organization that aims to help the poor cope with HIV/AIDS.

She is director of The Ohio Academy of Science's Student Advisory Council, co-founder and co-vice president of the Global Health Initiative, a member of the Honors Cohort Program, the Honors Program Student Advisory Board, and the university's Honors Collegium. The Honors Collegium provides support for students as they pursue high profile internships, prestigious scholarships and fellowships and acceptance into top graduate programs.

Details of the 2007 Marshall Scholarship winners are at www.marshallscholarship.org/winners.html.