Will Jay, a physics and German double major, has been named a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, the world's oldest and most prestigious international graduate scholarship.
Thirty-two U.S. Rhodes Scholars are selected each year and given the opportunity to do graduate work for up to three years at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. The scholarship honors top young scholars who exemplify the blend of intellect with character.
An Honors College senior who will graduate summa cum laude in May 2012, Jay, from Logansport, Indiana, has his sights set on the D.Phil in particle theory program at Oxford.
He is also a winner of the Goldwater Scholarship, which awards $7,500 to sophomores and juniors who plan to enter careers in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.
Jay is the third Ball State finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship in the past two year. Last year, 2011 Ball State graduates Abigail Shemoel, a landscape architecture major, and Matt Tancos, a biology major, were finalists for the award.
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Megan Whitacre, a political science major with minors in peace studies and sociology, has received a 2011 Truman Scholarship, one of the most prestigious and competitive scholarships in the nation.
As one of 60 Scholars selected nationwide this year – and the only one from Indiana – Whitacre is just the second student in Ball State’s history to receive the Harry S Truman Scholarship. The previous winner was Eric Farnsworth, who received the award in 1986 and is now vice president of the Council of the Americas.
The Truman Scholarship, which provides up to $30,000 to assist recipients in graduate school, is aimed at students who are committed to careers in public service. Approximately 600 students were nominated by colleges and universities across the nation.
A passionate advocate for improved policies on hunger relief, Whitacre is the founder and president of Ball State’s campus chapter of Oxfam. The Elkhart, Indiana, native and Honors College student served a year with AmeriCorps before entering Ball State.
After completing her bachelor’s degree in December, Whitacre plans to volunteer in sub-Saharan Africa, then enter a Master of Public Administration program. She wants to work as a legislative assistant and then become a campaign coordinator for Oxfam America or a similar nonprofit relief organization.
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Anders Nelson, a May 2011 graduate from St. Croix Falls, Wisc., has received an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship, which recognizes his many accomplishments in academics, athletics, extracurricular activities, and community service. A double major in accounting and finance, Nelson will use the $7,500 scholarship to help fund his MBA studies, beginning fall 2012.
For the past two years he has played middle blocker on the men’s volleyball team, after transferring to Ball State from the University of Minnesota. His athletic honors include being named to the American Volleyball Coaches Association All-America Second Team, the First Team All-Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association, and top NCAA ranking for the year in solo blocks.
Co-founder (with his sister) of the Nelson Volleyball Camp, for youth in grades 5-12, Nelson graduated summa cum laude and eventually intends to coach volleyball at the collegiate level.
A total of 174 NCAA Postgraduate Scholarships are awarded each year, with 29 male and 29 female athletes selected for each sports season.
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For the first time in university history, two Ball State students have received Goldwater Scholarships in a competition honoring only 275 students nationwide, and two others received honorable mention. The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship awards $7,500 to sophomores and juniors who plan to enter careers in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.
William Jay, a double major in physics and German from Logansport, Indiana, and junior Jennifer Strong, a biology/zoology major from Goshen, Indiana, are both Honors College students and plan on research-focused careers after completing graduate school.
Jay, who plans to earn his doctorate in physics or mathematical physics, said his career goal is to conduct research in quantum field theory or elementary particles and teach at the university level. Strong plans to earn a PhD in biology with the goal of conducting herpetology research in a field setting for a state or federal organization.
Ball State’s two other nominees for the scholarship, Lindsey Steiner and Ashley Zahrt, received honorable mention. Steiner, a pre-med/biology major from Roanoke, Indiana, plans to earn an MD/PhD in infectious diseases. She wants to serve as a physician in low-income areas and use that experience to develop a research program in globally important infectious diseases.
Zahrt, a pre-med/biology major from South Bend, Indiana, plans to earn an MD/PhD in pediatric toxicology, then do clinical work and conduct toxicology research in a teaching hospital.
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Four Ball State students and recent alumni have received Fulbright US Student Grants, to support research and teaching opportunities abroad during the 2011-12 academic year. A fifth Fulbright finalist has been awarded a French Government English Teaching Assistantship.
Indianapolis resident Lydia Spotts, a 2008 graduate who is currently pursuing a Master of Library Science degree at Indiana University-Indianapolis, has received a Fulbright research grant to Germany, where she will analyze and chronicle the development and influence of Buchwissenschaft, "the study and knowledge of the book."
She is a past winner of Ball State's Joe and Carol Trimmer Award for Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis, for research based on field study that she conducted in the Transylvania region of Romania.
Three May 2011 graduates have received Fulbright English Teaching Assistantships, for which they will teach English and also carry out extracurricular projects that allow them to become more fully engaged with their host countries:
Wes Fribley, a German and telecommunications double major from Goshen, Indiana, will be teaching English in Germany. The Honors College student and active member of Ball State's Digital Corps will also be organizing extracurricular opportunities for students to watch and discuss popular German and American films.
He plans on beginning graduate school after returning to the US, eventually pursuing a career in film production, film development, or screenwriting.
Spanish and sociology major Andrew Kern, Indianapolis, will be teaching English in Colombia at the university level and also volunteering with a service organization in his assigned community.
He is a former Marine Corps infantry squad leader who served two tours of duty in Iraq and who spent all of 2010 studying in Mexico. He plans a career with the US State Department, Department of Homeland Security, or federal law enforcement.
Lauren Petersen, an urban planning and development major from Bluffton, Indiana, will be teaching English at a university in Poland, where she will also create a “community-based planning” group that explores environmental, urban planning and design, and neighborhood revitalization techniques.
Petersen has been active in the Miss America Scholarship Program, currently as Miss Central Indiana. In preparation for a career with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, she has interned with the Indiana Lieutenant Governor’s Office and the Indiana House of Representatives.
Honors College student Megan Hoppe, a Fulbright finalist from Fishers, Indiana, has been awarded a French Government Teaching Assistantship, a program closely associated with the Fulbright program. An education major and French minor with an emphasis on English as a Second Language, she plans a professional teaching career after her year in France.
The Fulbright program is sponsored by the US State Department and is intended to increase mutual understanding between the people of the US and those of more than 150 countries. This year the department gave approximately 1,700 awards to US students and recent graduates.
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Jessica James, an Honors College student from Munster, Indiana, has been awarded a Freeman-Asia Scholarship, which supports American undergraduates planning to study overseas in East or Southeast Asia. 
A senior majoring in Japenese with a creative writing minor, James is spending the fall semester at Sapporo University in Japan. She plans to become a literary translator after graduation.
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Amberly Pressler, a senior majoring in telecommunications and Spanish, has received a King Family Foundation Undergraduate Scholarship, which is awarded to juniors and seniors majoring in 
television, film and related fields.
Pressler, an Honors College student from Trenton, Ohio, plans to begin a career in media relations after graduation.
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Lori Herber, a 2003 (B.A.) and 2005 (M.A.) Ball State graduate, has been awarded a German Chancellor Fellowship for Prospective Leaders from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Herber, of Champaign, Illinois, will spend the coming year producing an interactive storytelling project that investigates, through photos and interviews, educational issues faced by immigrant Turkish youth in Germany.
Herber, who majored in German and journalism for her bachelor’s degree and in journalism for her master’s degree, is currently Communications Specialist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Previously she served as Media Director at Ball State’s Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry.
In 2006 she received a Bosch Fellowship, which allowed her to work in Germany for a year, in part to document the transformation of a former industrial area into a tourist playground.
The German Chancellor Fellowship program annually selects up to ten young professionals from the USA, the Russian Federation, and the People’s Republic of China who have shown outstanding leadership potential in their careers. In addition to allowing Fellows to carry out independent projects, the program includes language study and activities aimed at providing insights into the social, cultural, economic and political life of Germany.
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Abigail Shemoel, a 2011 graduate from Kokomo, was named a finalist for the 2011 National Olmsted Scholarship, a program of the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) that honors the nation’s top landscape architecture students.
Shemoel is only the second undergraduate ever to be named an Olmsted Scholarship finalist in a program that almost exclusively recognizes graduate students.
She was also a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship (see below) and an alternate for the Rotary Global Ambassadorial Scholarship. In 2010 she was awarded a Udall Scholarship, the nation’s most important scholarship for undergraduates pursuing careers related to the environmental or tribal policy or healthcare, as well as a National Garden Clubs Scholarship.
Every accredited landscape architecture program in the nation is invited to nominate one student whose demonstrated leadership, ideas, influence, communication, and service will advance sustainable design and foster human and societal benefits. Shemoel and her five fellow national finalists each received $1,000 awards.
She is completing her final semester in Brazil, where she is studying Brazilian concepts of sustainability and completing her thesis on strategies for improving informal settlements. This fall Shemoel will begin a master’s degree in urban development planning at University College London. Ultimately, she seeks to develop sustainable solutions to urban expansion in developing nations, with the goal of working with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme.
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Alyssa Hartman, of Van Wert, Ohio, has received a scholarship to participate in the Fulbright Wales Summer Institute, a six-week summer study abroad program sponsored by the US-UK Fulbright Commission.
Hartman, with majors in pre-med and dietetics and a minor in chemistry, has just completed her freshman year and is exploring careers in healthcare. In Wales she will spend two weeks each at three different universities, learning about the economy, culture, politics, and change that characterize modern Wales.
The US-UK Fulbright Commission sponsors three different Summer Institutes, all of them aimed at freshmen and sophomores who have little or no experience abroad.
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Jacob Walker, a criminal justice and criminology major and Chinese minor, has been awarded a Taiwan-United States Sister Alliance (TUSA) Scholarship. The scholarship supports two months of summer study at Taiwan National University, with courses focused on language and culture.
After completing his bachelor’s degree in 2012, Walker, of Indianapolis, anticipates further language study in China and then a career with the federal government, ideally working for the FBI.
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Two students have been awarded Gilman Scholarships, for summer study abroad.
Ariana Brown, of Dayton, Ohio, is participating in the CCIM (College of Communication, Information, and Media) China Summer Immersion program. For six weeks she and fellow Ball State students are analyzing Chinese written communication, aural and visual communication, and other media messages, in order to ascertain how modern China attempts to communicate its culture to American/Western audiences.
A psychology and advertising double major, Brown will enter her junior year this fall. A blog about her experiences in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing is found at www.ccimchinaimmersion.com/immersion/category/brown/.
Beth Muhlenkamp is studying in Munich, Germany, this summer for nearly six weeks, through the Kentucky Institute for International Studies. With majors in apparel design and fashion merchandising and minors in German and marketing, she hopes to bring principles of sustainability to the fashion industry and its use of materials.
Muhlenkamp, who will begin her sophomore year at Ball State this fall, is from Ft. Recovery, Ohio. In Germany she is living with a German host family and taking classes on language and culture.
The federally-funded Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program provides up to $5,000 to US undergraduate students pursuing academic studies abroad, in order to better prepare them to assume significant roles in an increasingly global economy and interdependent world. All scholarship recipients are required to carry out a follow-on project upon their return to the US that helps promote international education and understanding.