Paula Long, Trinity ’09, and former Benjamin N. Duke Scholar, was awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, Cambridge University officials announced Friday.
The scholarship, which was awarded to 29 graduate students from 20 states and 24 universities across the United States, covers the full cost of studying at Cambridge, including travel to England and an annual stipend. An October 2000 donation of $210 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds the scholarship.
Long hails from Carrboro, N.C. While at Duke, she was an English major and studied in Jordan for a semester. Her studies focused on gender and the work force in the Middle East, and at Duke she led an organization aimed to promote peace and understanding among Arabs, Jews, Muslims and Israelis through dialogue. After graduating from Duke, Long studied Arabic at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
She was selected from a pool of approximately 800 applicants this year. The Cambridge selection committees whittled the list down to 220, then to about 100 candidates over two selection rounds based on “intellectual ability, leadership potential, a commitment to improving the lives of others and a good fit with Cambridge,” according to the scholarship’s Web site.
The finalists attended interviews in Annapolis, Md. earlier this month, from which the 29 scholarship winners were selected. Another 50 Gates Scholars will be selected next month following interviews for candidates outside the U.S.
From 2001 to 2009, 911 Gates Cambridge Scholarships have been awarded to students from around the world.
According to a University news release, Long will pursue a master’s degree in Modern Middle Eastern Studies while at Cambridge and plans to enter academia following her studies.
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