Dr. Shaolu Yu, associate professor of urban studies and chair of Asian studies at Rhodes, has been selected as one of the faculty associates to work on the project Documenting Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Voices and Stories: Community-based Digital Story Telling in St. Louis. The three-year project was initiated by ASIANetwork and is supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.

Taylor Tucker of local NBC affiliate WMC/Action News 5 recently visited campus to interview Rhodes students Asya Bray, Erin Parker, and Arness Georgetown and President Jennifer Collins about the new National Pan-Hellenic Council Plaza that pays tribute to historically Black sororities and fraternities.

Brooke Taylor, a senior international studies and environmental studies double major from Austin, TX, has been awarded The Steve and Riea Lainoff Crop Trust Fellowship in Honor of Cary Fowler ’71. The fellowship is made possible through the generosity of Steve and Riea Lainoff, parents of Rhodes graduates Brian Lainoff ’11 and Mark Lainoff ’15.

Rhodes College is joining an elite cohort from Princeton University, University of Chicago, University of Virginia, University of Southern California, and University of California, Los Angeles, as the only mock trial programs having both their A and B teams advance to the American Mock Trial Association (AMTA) National Championship Tournament to be held April 19-21 in Chicago.

Blair Kinsey ’24, Hannah Meit ’25, and Lily Whitesell ’24 participated in the 84th William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. The rigorous competition is administered by the Mathematical Association of America, and the Rhodes students competed with some of the brightest minds from colleges and universities across the country, including Harvard, MIT, and Princeton.

Rhodes College will unveil and dedicate its new National Pan-Hellenic Council Plaza on Saturday, March 23, at 11 a.m. Located south of the Bryan Campus Life Center, in the heart of the campus, the plaza pays tribute to the nine National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) fraternities and sororities, commonly known as the Divine Nine.

Julia Blackmon, a Rhodes College senior from Austin, TX, has been selected to receive the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which provides a one year $40,000 grant for purposeful, independent exploration outside the United States. The award allows fellows a rare opportunity right after college to pursue original projects on a global scale.

Deanie Parker and William C. Rhodes III will receive honorary degrees at the 175th Commencement of Rhodes College on May 11. Rhodes is former president and chief executive officer of AutoZone, where he continues to serve as executive chairman of the board. Parker, who received two Grammy Awards this year, was publicist of legendary Stax Records and the first president and CEO of the Soulsville Foundation.

At Rhodes, Mehn Tal Norm '24 found the flexibility to customize his coursework to suit his academic vision. Not only is he minoring in both Chinese and economics, he has also worked with faculty across departments to make his international studies major more interdisciplinary and studied abroad to get hands-on experience in the field.

Four Rhodes students—Parth Sinojia, Samuel Lippe, Shayla Garrison, and Lauren Surratt—presented research at the 26th Annual Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education held recently in Omaha, NE. Prof. Erika David Parr accompanied the group and also presented at the conference, which had more than 300 in-person and 100 virtual attendees.