Coe College senior Katie Ameku selected as a Rhodes Scholar

Coe College senior Katie Ameku selected as a Rhodes Scholar

Coe College senior Katie Ameku is among 32 students from the United States selected as a Rhodes Scholar. The pre-eminent global academic award provides scholarships and travel expenses to study at the University of Oxford.

Nearly 3000 US students applied to be Rhodes Scholars. Committees in 16 districts across the country selected 238 finalists for interviews.

Ms Ameku, who is from Independence, Missouri, is a mathematics and physics major at Coe. She is the youngest elected official in Missouri, organizing Democratic election efforts in her home precinct. On campus, she is a senior resident assistant and lobbied for Title IX training for researchers. She has conducted physics academic research and also travelled to Georgia Tech and Penn to contribute to research projects as well.

She's studying lead borate glass structure glasses using EXAFS in collaboration with Prof. Faisal Alamgir and Grad student Ian Slagle, Coe student Yi Wei and Professor Steve Feller, Centenary Honorary Fellow of the Society. She also studied titanium tellurium vanadate glasses with Mario Affatigato FSGT. Katie gave presentations to the Iowa Glass Conference and the AIP "PhysCon" Conference.

Another engineering project Katie has worked on with Mario and Steve involved making glassy electrolytes for batteries. These were based on multicomponent amorphous tellurites that were rapidly quenched. Katie made numerous samples and characterized them using Raman spectroscopy. The company they worked with was Johnson Energy in Atlanta, GA; this is a minority-owned company run by Dr Ron Johnson, a designer of power supplies for NASA.

Also, with Professor Feller she studied the numismatics of Japanese-American camps of WWII. They visited camp sites in Arkansas and published three articles.

As a Rhodes Scholar, Ameku plans to pursue a philosophy, politics and economics degree at Oxford. It’s a signature degree at Oxford and frequently chosen by world leaders.

“Not only am I honored with the opportunity to pursue further education at Oxford, but being able to represent Coe is truly, truly the greatest honor. Having access to a network of changemakers and people that are also like-minded is going to further prepare me for my future,” Ms Ameku said.

More on the the Rhodes Award: Coe College and Rhodes Trust