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Columns::February 25, 2002
New approach to campus parking regulations adopted
Spring Charter Lecture will deal with the relationship between man and nature
Grad School administrator says faculty key to recruitment success
Proposal for campus memorial goes before University Council Executive Committee
Watered down: Study paves way to water-efficient cotton
Professor focuses on teaching his students different ‘fields’ of law
Iowa prof will head pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences here
Newsmakers
Merging services, expanding missions
Campus News
Two Gates to Cambridge
By Allyson Mann
tiny@uga.edu
and Kim Cretors
kcretors@uga.edu
For the second year in a row, UGA students have been awarded Gates Cambridge Scholarships. The scholarship program, funded by a $210 million endowment from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is in its second year.
The 2002 scholars from UGA are William Hollingsworth, a Ph.D. student working in computer science, and Yi Lee, a senior in the Honors Program.
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| 2002 Gates Cambridge Scholars from UGA are William Hollingsworth (left), a Ph.D. student working in computer science, and Yi Lee, a senior in the Honors Program working on two bachelor’s degrees. (Photo by Peter Frey) |
The merit-based scholarships--patterned after the University of Oxford’s Rhodes Scholarships--cover one to three years of study at the University of Cambridge. Gates Cambridge Scholarships are open to students from any country except Britain.
“This is tremendous news for the University of Georgia and just one more indication of the continued upward trend in quality across the board here,” says UGA President Michael F. Adams. “For UGA to have three Gates Cambridge Scholars in the first two classes may surprise some, but not those of us who know the credentials of our students and the extraordinary work of our faculty. Recognition such as this flows from doing things well.”
The inaugural class of Gates Cambridge Scholars included Semil Choksi, also a student in UGA’s Honors Program. Additionally, this year’s list of recipients includes Bonnie Ling, a former UGA Honors student who is now a graduate student at Tufts University. In total, UGA has had four students or former students named Gates Cambridge Scholars in the first two years of the program’s existence, three of them Honors Program students.
Hollingsworth’s research at UGA focuses on computer speech synthesis. He hopes to develop software that will read entire books out loud to people who are visually impaired. Speech synthesizers currently available are not intended for long documents because the quality of the speech and intonation makes them difficult to listen to for long periods of time.
“I think that’s well within reach, and the only question is ‘how well’ it will work, not ‘whether’ it will work,” says Michael Covington, associate director of UGA’s Artificial Intelligence Center and Hollingsworth’s Ph.D. adviser. “After completing his B.A. and M.A. at UGA, I think it’s fair to say that Bill is well prepared for Cambridge University.”
Hollingsworth’s scholarship is for one year starting in the fall of 2002. He plans to study linguistics with an emphasis on acoustic phonetics and speech synthesis.
“I am extremely honored to be offered the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, and I am very grateful to everyone who has helped or encouraged me along the way,” says Hollingsworth.
Lee, who was born in Jahore, Malaysia, is working toward two bachelor of arts degrees: one in journalism under the direction of Nathaniel Kohn in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and the other in East Asian studies with the guidance of UGA Associate Dean Clifton Pannell of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
“Yi Lee’s selection as a Gates Cambridge Scholar brings great recognition to both the Honors Program and the University of Georgia. He is a wonderful undergraduate scholar, and we knew he would be a strong contender for this prestigious award,” says Jere Morehead, associate provost and director of the Honors Program. “We are not surprised that he made such a favorable impression on the Gates selection committee.”
Lee’s Honors thesis (in East Asian studies) concerns the evolution of Taiwanese politics during the years after the end of martial law in the Republic of China. It is tentatively titled “In the Shadow of Tiananmen: Taiwanese Politics, 1988-2001.”
“I want to thank my mother and my teachers for their dedication, generosity and graciousness,” says Lee. “I am the person I am today because of their many efforts, and I hope that I can continue to reflect well on them far into the future. If the Gates scholarship is a sign of great things to come, then I wish I can also share my future successes with the people that have so profoundly shaped my thought and character--my mother, my teachers and my friends.”
Lee hopes to earn a Ph.D. in Chinese history while at Cambridge. His dissertation will deal with former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and the political institutional history of the Chinese Communist Party during Deng’s reign.
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