Joseph Cunningham, Gleaner Writer
WEST
INCREDIBLE! THAT'S how 21-year-old Keon West, Jamaica's 2005-2006 Rhodes Scholar, feels.
The Campion College alumnus is currently enrolled at Macalister College in Minnesota, United States, where he is completing a bachelor's degree in psychology and French.
"Now I have got the Rhodes Scholarship, I don't think it will sink in until tomorrow," he told The Gleaner, minutes after the selection process last Friday.
Two years ago when he was awarded the
coveted Kofi Annan Scholarship, granted to international students with outstanding Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) results and noble leadership qualities, West chose Macalister College.
"At that point, I said I wanted to maximise the opportunity. It is a very good school, and it produced the U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan," said West. He has been on the Dean's List for every semester at Macalister.
Rhodes Scholarship selection committees are charged to seek excellence in qualities of mind and in qualities of person, with the recipient expected to serve the world in the decades ahead.
The scholarship affords the recipient enrolment in the prestigious Oxford University in England. West will practise experimental psychology, majoring in clinical-cognitive psychology.
FINEST SCHOLARS
Head of the Jamaican selection committee, Governor-General Sir Howard Cooke, while announcing this year's awardee, said: "Despite what people say, Jamaica produces some of the finest scholars of intellectual merit in the world." He noted that this year's Rhodes candidates were among the best ever.
West's mother, Doreen Brady-West, told The Gleaner that from a tender age, her son always showed a level of maturity that exceeded his years.
"He has always been organised, serious and self-motivated; you don't have to monitor him," she said.
See related story on Page D10.
