College Junior Wins Beinecke Scholarship

Mahriana Rofheart, CC '04, is one step closer to realizing her dream of earning a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature.

Early this month, Rofheart, a Comparative Literature and Society major, was awarded the prestigious Beinecke Scholarship, which supports students who will attend graduate school in the arts, humanities, or social sciences.

The Long Island native is currently far from home in Cameroon, where she is spending a semester studying African Literature.

The Beinecke Scholarship, which supports two years of graduate study, was established in 1971 by the board of directors of the Sperry and Hutchinson Company. Every year, 100 colleges are invited to nominate one student for the award, out of which 20 winners are selected.

"This is a very prestigious award, and one of the more generous ones as well," said Lavinia Lorch, assistant dean of student affairs. In order to qualify for the award, nominees must have a record of academic excellence and a history of need-based financial aid.

"Mahriana was selected as Columbia's nominee for because had an extremely intelligent and coherent personal statement and was able to articulate real intellectual purpose in it. She is mature, lively, and very focused with an extremely creative mind. I am sure she'll do well in the field she chooses," Lorch said.

Rofheart's professors are just as enthusiastic and excited about her future.

"[I'm] rather proud to be associated with Mahriana," said Joseph Slaughter, assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature. "What has always struck me about Mahriana is her relentless curiosity and her critical self-awareness; she knows that there is so much she doesn't know. This, to me, is one of Mahriana's outstanding qualities and it leads to a rigorous commitment to do her homework [and] to follow lines of thought and textual context wherever they lead."

Rofheart said she put a great deal of effort into her application for the scholarship and was extremely excited to hear that she had been selected as Columbia's nominee, not to mention that she had won the award. She was guided through the application process by Anabella Martinez, an assistant director in the Scholars and Fellowship Office.

"Writing 1,000 words about yourself is really hard, but the people in the fellowship office were very helpful and gave me advice about what to focus on," Rofheart said.

"Mahriana was extremely humble and very committed to her graduate studies and to what she wants to do," Martinez added.

Rofheart plans on applying to several graduate schools, but is focusing on two on the West Coast: Stanford University and UCLA.
"I am interested in schools that have programs that are interdisciplinary, that include not just literature but culture and history as well," she said.

Rofheart is mainly interested in post-colonial African and Caribbean literature. She is on the editorial board of the Columbia Review and is fluent in French, which comes in handy in Cameroon, where her classes are taught in both English and French.

Her passion for literature is profound, and she dreams of becoming a professor and sharing her love of literature with others.

"Researching, reading, and really analyzing literature is what I most love to do, and I want to be able to do it for as long as possible," she said.