Three college students with Atlanta-area roots have been chosen to become Rhodes Scholars, including one young man whose parents are refugees from war-torn Africa.
The winners of the prestigious award are: Sarah M. Bufkin, an Atlanta graduate from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Ridwan Y. Hassen, of Marietta, who attended Emory University and now attends Dartmouth College and Sai P. Gourisankar, who is from Atlanta and attends the University of Texas at Austin.
The three are among just 32 Americans selected for the coveted scholarship this year, which provides study at the University of Oxford in England.
Hassen’s family story is an All-American saga. He said his father, Yassin Hussein, an Ethiopian of Somalia descent, was forced to leave his homeland and walk more than 350 miles to find safety. Hussein and his wife, Saada Bayle, emigrated to the U.S., had five children who went to college, three who are currently at Dartmouth.
Hassen is 21 and majoring in computer science modified with neuroscience, and credits his parents’ drive for where he is today.
“My success is predicated on their sacrifices,” he said. His mother has worked in factories and babysits.
According to a press release from the Rhodes Trust, the South Cobb High School grad “founded a global development project focused on the Horn of Africa, was a volunteer coordinator for the NAACP, and founded Emory’s first AIDS activist organization. He has done neurobiology research at UCSF, and on an implicated gene in Autism Spectrum Disorder.”
In a short interview Sunday, Hassen, who learned of the award Saturday, said he wants to study public policy and go into politics.
Sarah Bufkin of Atlanta, was a 2013 North Carolina grad and is pursuing a master’s degree in moral, legal and political philosophy on a Mitchell Scholarship in Northern Ireland.
She is a 2009 graduate from Grady High School in Atlanta, where she was a member of the team that won the state mock trial championship. She plans to use her time at Oxford to pursue a doctorate in politics and would like to one day practice civil rights law.
In North Carolina, she sometimes wrote for the college paper and once described her learning philosophy: “Instead of thinking of the self as a fortress, secure behind its moat, I like to think of myself as permeable, open to the world, effecting and being effected in turn by my surroundings.”
Bufkin is the daughter of Mark and Jacqueline Bufkin of Atlanta.
The third recipient is Sai P. Gourisankar, a senior at the University of Texas, where he will graduate in May with a bachelor’s degrees in chemical engineering and a liberal arts. He also has a minor in German.
According to Rhodes, “He has several publications relating to his work in nanotechnology, particularly relating to nanoclusters. He is also president of an organization that fosters discussion between the humanities and the sciences.”
About the Author
