琳娜·加利纳（John Kelly/Boise State University）

埃琳娜·加利纳（Elena Gallina）于2000年代早期在科索沃长大的经历让这位曾在那里工作的美国人道主义救援人员的女儿亲身经历了在武装冲突后重建一个国家的种种艰辛。

如今，加利纳作为一名美国的罗德斯学者（American Rhodes Scholar）正准备赴英国牛津大学（Oxford University）深造，争取获得难民和被迫移民研究硕士学位，以及工商管理硕士学位。她尤其热衷于帮助身陷冲突之中的妇女和女童。

加利纳说：“我希望这能让我给予更多的人实现增强其自主权的途径。”她在爱达荷州（Idaho）博伊西州立大学（Boise State University）研读学士学位期间给难民当过阿尔巴尼亚语翻译。

加利纳是入选2019年美国罗德斯学者的32名美国学生之一，其中将近一半是移民或第一代美国人。女性为21人，是历届美国罗德斯学者中人数最多的。

这项奖学金是1902年由英国商人及矿业巨头塞西尔·罗德斯（Cecil Rhodes）捐赠创设的。

莉娅·帕特罗斯（Lia Petrose）计划在牛津大学攻读她的第二个本科学位——计算机科学和哲学。她在匹兹堡大学（University of Pittsburgh）读本科期间学习了如何利用电子医疗档案来改善像马拉维这样的发展中国家的患者所获得的医疗服务。她现在是麻省理工学院（Massachusetts Institute of Technology）的一名研究助理，致力于调查公营及私营部门鼓励医疗保健市场进行创新的举措。

在埃塞俄比亚长大的帕特罗斯说：“我希望利用医疗数据来为临床决策提供信息，特别是在马拉维和埃塞俄比亚这样资源匮乏的地方，同时提倡患者对于这些数据的自主权及所有权。”她希望在牛津大学研读的专业能帮助她获得计算电子医疗档案数据所需的技能，同时还能有助于探索有关维护患者权益的道德问题，例如隐私权及获取研究资源的渠道。

拉扬·塞梅伊瑞（Rayan Alsemeiry）计划在牛津大学攻读哲学硕士学位。他和家人于2001年刚从沙特阿拉伯移民到亚利桑那州（Arizona）梅萨市（Mesa）时，曾有过无家可归的经历。这段经历使他热衷于帮助弱势群体。他目前正在耶鲁大学（Yale University）研读贫困及社会排斥问题。

塞梅伊瑞说：“罗德斯奖学金将让我能够完全专注于思考如何解决贫困和社会孤立问题——这些问题是我母亲以及我在梅萨的很多邻居终生都要面对的。”

加利纳、帕特罗斯和塞梅伊瑞是将于2019年10月赴牛津大学深造的来自60多个国家的100名罗德斯学者之中的三位。

本文由自由撰稿人Linda Wang撰写。

Growing up in Kosovo in the early 2000s gave Elena Gallina, the daughter of American humanitarian aid workers there, an intimate understanding of the challenges of rebuilding a country after an armed conflict.

Today Gallina is preparing for her studies at Oxford University in England as an American Rhodes Scholar. There she will pursue a master’s degree in refugee and forced migration studies and a Master of Business Administration degree. She is particularly excited about helping women and girls caught in conflict.

“I hope it’ll allow me to give more people access to achieve their own empowerment,” says Gallina, who served as an Albanian refugee interpreter while she earned a bachelor’s degree at Boise State University in Idaho.

Gallina is among the 32 American students elected into the 2019 class of U.S. Rhodes Scholars. Nearly half of the 2019 U.S. scholars are immigrants or first-generation Americans, and 21 are women — the most ever elected to an American Rhodes class.

The scholarships were endowed in 1902 by British businessman and mining magnate Cecil Rhodes.

Lia Petrose plans to pursue a second bachelor’s degree in computer science and philosophy at Oxford. As an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh, Petrose studied how to use electronic medical records in a way that improves the way health care is provided to patients in developing countries like Malawi. Now a research assistant at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Petrose is investigating public and private incentives for innovation in health-care markets.

“I hope to use health data to inform clinical decisionmaking, especially in low-resource settings like Malawi and Ethiopia, at the same time advocating for patient agency and ownership over these data,” says Petrose, who grew up in Ethiopia. She hopes the program at Oxford will help her gain the technical skills she needs to compute electronic medical record data while at the same time exploring moral questions around patient advocacy, such as privacy and access to research.

Rayan Alsemeiry plans to pursue a master’s degree in philosophy at Oxford. Having gone through periods of homelessness when his family first moved to Mesa, Arizona, from Saudi Arabia in 2001, he developed a passion for helping vulnerable communities. He is currently studying poverty and social exclusion at Yale University.

“The Rhodes scholarship will allow me to dedicate myself fully to thinking through how we can address poverty and social isolation — issues that people like my mom and many of my neighbors in Mesa face for an entire lifetime,” he says.

Gallina, Petrose and Alsemeiry are among the 100 Rhodes Scholars from more than 60 countries who will attend Oxford starting in October 2019.

This article was written by freelancer Linda Wang.