CMU graduate named Rhodes Scholar

Kaitlynn Riely
Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Burma, a country in southeastern Asia with a history of ethnic civil wars, has long interested Courtney Wittekind.

Now, as a Rhodes Scholar, she’ll have the chance to study it further.

Ms. Wittekind, 23, a 2013 Carnegie Mellon graduate originally from Mason, Ohio, was one of the 32 Americans named Saturday as a Rhodes Scholar for 2014. Each year, 80 scholars are selected worldwide to receive the generous scholarships.

She is one of four Carnegie Mellon graduates to ever receive the scholarship, and the first to receive it since 2002.

The program covers the full cost of attending Oxford University in England for two to four years, and Ms. Wittekind will use it to pursue a doctorate in anthropology, with a geographical focus on Burma, also called Myanmar.