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November 2014

Santa Clara University Alum wins prestigious Rhodes Scholarship

Aven Satre Meloy '13 was also won the Nobili Award and a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship

A Santa Clara University graduate is among good company, winning the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship announced this weekend. Aven Satre Meloy ‘13 joins a long list of successful leaders to win the prize including former President Bill Clinton and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff. Rhodes scholars receive funding to study at Oxford University in England.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 24, 2014 – A Santa Clara University graduate is among good company, winning the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship announced this weekend. Aven Satre Meloy ‘13 joins a long list of successful leaders to win the prize including former President Bill Clinton and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Rhodes scholars receive funding to study at Oxford University in England. Students from MIT, Princeton, Brown, Stanford and Harvard are also among this year’s winners.

“The Rhodes Scholarship is a prestigious honor recognized worldwide, and we are very proud for Aven,” said SCU President Michael Engh, S.J. “His commitment to ethics, leadership and social justice personify Jesuit ideals."

Satre Meloy majored in political science and environmental studies with a minor in international studies at SCU. While at SCU, he won the Nobili Award in 2013, worked with the Center for Sustainability and became a Hackworth Fellow for the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics where he worked on issues of academic integrity. He also worked with One in Four, a sexual assault prevention peer education group.

“Aven represents the very best of the Jesuit ideal of a person for others. He is smart, generous and committed to justice for the human and natural world. I know I speak for many at Santa Clara when I say I could not be happier for a  talented young man,” said David DeCosse, director of the campus ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Satre Meloy received a Fulbright grant to teach American culture to university students in Turkey, and conduct research on Turkish peoples' experiences as Muslims living in secular, democratic state. He had previously studied in Turkey as part of the Leavey School of Business Global Fellows Program.

Satre Meloy plans to complete his Master's in Philosophy in Geography and the Environment at Oxford.  He is currently a White House Intern working in the office of Energy and Climate Change. He says he is passionate about the profound social, political and economic challenges posed by environmental change. He will begin courses at Oxford in the fall of 2015. He is the third Santa Clara University graduate to become a Rhodes Scholar.

Media Contact: Marika E. Krause | mekrause@scu.edu | 408-829-4836

About Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located 40 miles south of San Francisco in California’s Silicon Valley, offers its more than 8,800 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, theology, and engineering, plus master’s and law degrees and engineering Ph.D.s. Distinguished nationally by one of the highest graduation rates among all U.S. master’s universities, California’s oldest operating higher-education institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. For more information, see www.scu.edu.

Rhodes Scholar,Aven Satre Meloy