UConn Senior Named School's First Rhodes Scholar

STORRS, CT — University of Connecticut senior Wanjiku Gatheru has been selected as the school's first Rhodes Scholar.

Known around campus as "Wawa," Gatheru is a native of Pomfret who has been active in student government, sustainability and environmental issues, food security, and many other programs and initiatives both on and off UConn’s campuses.

Gatheru is majoring in environmental studies with minors in global studies and urban and community studies. She is among 32 people nationwide elected to the American Rhodes Scholar Class of 2020 and will continue postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford in England.

The prestigious program counts presidents, ambassadors, business leaders, basketball stars and many other prominent Americans among its alumni, and is among the world’s most selective academic programs.

Rhodes scholars for 2020 were announced late Saturday.

"As I reflect on my journey, it is extremely clear to me that my accomplishments — my story — is not my own," she said Sunday. "I stand on the sturdy shoulders of the many people that have supported me along the way. My family, my mentors, and friends. The Rhodes application is particularly strenuous, with a total of eight letters of recommendation required. So I quite literally would have not been in this position if I didn’t have professors and mentors who believed in me. And I am so thankful for them."

Wanjiku Gatheru (Sean Flynn/UConn)

Gatheru’s "academic and service endeavors" had been widely recognized even before the Rhodes Scholar announcement, school officials said. She was a 2019 Truman Scholar and a 2019 Udall Scholar, the first student in UConn’s history to win those honors in the same year. She has also received the McCullough Leadership award, UConn’s highest student leadership award.

At Oxford, Gatheru proposes to pursue dual master’s degrees in Nature, Society, and Environmental Governance and Evidence-based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation. She said, while there, she wants to research "overlooked barriers that prevent people of color from participating in the environmental field."

Gatheru said she aspires to eventually run for Congress, perhaps becoming "the first black congresswoman from Connecticut’s 2nd Congressional District."

The 32 Rhodes Scholars will commence their studies at Oxford starting in October 2020. Gatheru and her counterparts were selected from a pool of 963 applicants nominated by their colleges and universities, and who were then narrowed down to a smaller group of students who went through a rigorous interview process.

See more on the UConn Today website.