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| Photo Submitted
Danielle Neighbour, Schwarzman Scholar. |
Danielle
Neighbour, a University of Arkansas Honors College Fellow and senior
civil engineering major in the College of Engineering, has been named
one of this year’s Schwarzman Scholars. She is one of 129 students from
30 countries and 75 universities who will receive a full scholarship for
graduate study at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of China’s
premiere universities. This year 2,747 candidates from 119 countries
competed for the award.
Neighbour is the first University of Arkansas student to receive the
prestigious international scholarship. She is from Lenexa, Kansas, and
is the daughter of Rhonda and Robert Neighbour.
Neighbour is a member of the second class of Schwarzman Scholars. The
master’s degree scholarship program was founded by Blackstone chair,
CEO and co-founder Stephen A. Schwarzman. The scholarships are intended
to recognize future leaders in a broad range of activities, educating
and preparing the world’s most exceptional men and women to confront the
most difficult challenges of the coming century, at the same time
developing an understanding of China that will be essential to leading
in the future.
“I am overjoyed with the caliber of students who will make up the
second class of Schwarzman Scholars,” said Schwarzman. “It has been
truly inspiring for me to meet these people, who at such a young age
have already started to make an impact on the world. Clearly their
journey is just beginning, but it is our hope that the scholars of the
inaugural class, the Class of 2018, and every class thereafter will
leave Schwarzman College with a better understanding of how to foster
friendship, cooperation and collaboration among the peoples of the
world.”
Neighbour is eager to start the program and said she has already started practicing Mandarin.
"I'm
incredibly excited to participate in the second cohort of Schwarzman
Scholars at Tsinghua University,” Neighbour said. “I'm grateful for the
opportunity to spend a year learning from global leaders in preparation
for a future dedicated to public service. It's an honor to be the first
to represent the University of Arkansas in the Schwarzman program and I
am deeply thankful for the support of U of A faculty, staff, my family,
and my fellow students. I'd especially like to thank the Office of
Nationally Competitive Awards, the Honors College, and the College of
Engineering for their integral roles in making my undergraduate
experience such a positive one."
Neighbour plans to pursue a career focused on improving access to
clean drinking water in developing nations, a passion she developed at
the University of Arkansas and which has already taken her around the
world.
As an undergraduate engineering intern for Reach Beyond International
she helped install point-of-use drinking water technologies in
southeast Ecuador, where she designed potable water systems in the Andes
Mountains and indigenous Amazon jungle communities. She is fluent in
Spanish and she worked side-by-side with members of these communities to
ensure that reliable drinking water was available. She also developed
an education program about a recently installed water tower for the
residents of an inland village in Belize.
Neighbour also worked in Vietnam, where she realized there was a
significant health issue associated with contaminated drinking water.
She organized an effort to inform farmers about the problem and led a
group to design a purification process, easy and inexpensive to create
and maintain. She is currently researching water purification methods
for natural disaster relief in developing urban areas.
This is the second nationally competitive scholarship Neighbour has
received. Last spring she was one of 59 students — and one of two U of A
students — to be awarded a Truman Scholarship of $30,000, to be used
toward her graduate studies. Truman Scholars are selected on the basis
of their academic success, leadership skills, and the likelihood of
their becoming public service leaders.
She is a Presidential Fellow with the Center for the Study of the
Presidency. In 2015, she received a State Undergraduate Research
Fellowship, which funded the project “Cryogenic Viscous Liquids on Icy
Moons.” Her research examined the viscosity of fluids on the surface of
Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. She received the Dwornik Award for
this work. She also worked on a water treatment project titled
“Re-Envisioning Disaster Relief Shelters in Urban Environments:
Integration of Water Treatment Systems.”
“The University of Arkansas could not have a better representative
among the Schwarzman Scholars than Danielle Neighbour,” said Chancellor
Joe Steinmetz. “Her career on campus has been driven by the desire to
use her talents and knowledge to help people in the most basic and
essential way possible. By finding ways to bring clean drinking water to
people in developing nations she is bringing them life itself. She
knows that reaching her goal will take more than engineering skills –
she will need to understand policy-making, international community
development and the nuances of different cultures. Becoming a Schwarzman
Scholar is the important next step in her education.”
The Schwarzman Scholars were selected through a rigorous and thorough
selection process designed to evaluate leadership experience and
potential, intellectual and academic ability, strength of character and
the capacity to understand emerging trends, design solutions, and
inspire others to a vision.
“We are very pleased to have Danielle joining our class,” said Robert
Garris, global director of admissions for the program. “Through her
work on access to clean water she has demonstrated the leadership
qualities that define a Schwarzman Scholar, and we look forward to all
that she will bring to the class of young leaders gathering in Beijing
next August.”
The applications were reviewed by a team of readers from around the
world with 300 semi-finalists invited for in-person interviews in
Beijing, Bangkok, London or New York before international panels
composed of CEOs, former heads of state, university presidents,
non-profit executives, journalists and other leaders.
“The second class of Schwarzman Scholars is a remarkable group of
people who are committed to broadening their worldview and encouraging
peace and friendship between the east and the west,” said Executive
Director Nigel Thrift. “I continue to be amazed by these students and
how Schwarzman Scholars is creating global citizens who will be well
equipped to succeed and lead in whatever field they choose.”
The scholarship is fully funded for all participants, including
travel costs and a personal stipend, and is supported by the program’s
endowment. Scholars will live and study together at Schwarzman College,
the dedicated state-of-the-art academic and residential building built
exclusively for the program at Tsinghua University.
Scholars will study public policy, economics and business, and
international studies, and spend a year immersed in an international
community of thinkers, innovators and senior leaders in business,
politics and society. They will learn from one another in an environment
of intellectual engagement, professional development and cultural
exchange, and pursue their academic disciplines while building their
leadership capacities. The purpose of the Schwarzman Scholars program is
to provide an experience that will expand students’ understanding of
the world and create a growing network of global leaders for the future.
About Schwarzman Scholars: Schwarzman Scholars was
inspired by the Rhodes Scholarship and is designed to meet the
challenges of the 21st century and beyond. Blackstone co-founder Stephen
A. Schwarzman personally contributed $100 million to the program and is
leading a fundraising campaign to raise an additional $350 million from
private sources to endow the program in perpetuity. The $450 million
endowment will support up to 200 scholars annually from the U.S., China,
and around the world for a one-year master’s degree program at Tsinghua
University in Beijing, one of China’s most prestigious universities and
an indispensable base for the country’s scientific and technological
research. Scholars chosen for this highly selective program will live in
Beijing for a year of study and cultural immersion, attending lectures,
traveling, and developing a better understanding of China. Admissions
opened in the fall of 2015, with the first class of students in
residence in 2016.
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For more opportunities for funded graduate study & research abroad, check out this article from Diversity Abroad: http://www.diversityabroad.com/guides/study-and-research-fellowships/study-and-research-fellowships
For additional general scholarships for study abroad, please check out http://studyabroad.uark.edu/funding.
