Taking Flight

Kobi Ioni rode a Gilman Scholarship to Japan

Ryan Branson

The Fulbright application process was very rewarding to me, even though I did not end up being selected. First of all, writing the two essays (the statement of grant purpose and personal statement) really gave me an opportunity to think about what my goals and interests were for the grant and also about my future…

Brendan Marsh

Brendan Marsh, 2017 Mark Twain Fellowship Recipient On April 4, 2017, at about 10:30 a.m., I tricked Brendan Marsh, about to graduate from Mizzou with degrees in physics and math, into entering the Chancellor’s suite—where he was introduced as the university’s fourth Mark Twain Fellow. Brendan thought I had taken him to Jesse Hall to…

Helen Bass

Helen Bass, 2016 Mark Twain Fellowship Recipient Helen Bass grew up in Kansas City, the daughter of a self-described “blue-collar working stiff” who saw that a college education would open doors that were never open to him. When Helen came to Mizzou, she discovered a need to go beyond textbooks, to “bridge the gap between…

Carly Garrow

You do not have to spend much time with Carly Garrow to know that she is a “challenge-driven person” as she describes in her LinkedIn bio.  From seeking competitive research opportunities as an underclassman at the University of Missouri to recently completing a half-marathon, Carly looks for intellectual and personal challenges and meets them. Spend…

Jessica Anania

Jessica Anania 2015 Mark Twain Fellowships Recipient Jessica arrived in Columbia as a Walter Williams Scholar in the Missouri School of Journalism, with a notion of becoming a war correspondent, so she studied International Journalism, along with Psychology and Political Science to provide a strong foundation of the people, places, and politics that would undergird…

Zach Parolin

Zach Parolin dedicated much of his undergraduate focus on social justice issues, even spending spring break of his sophomore year sleeping on the streets of Amarillo—five days and nights of intentional homelessness, both to raise awareness of the problem of homeless youth and to honor his mother, who had been displaced from her biological family…