Madison East alumni and UW-Madison senior Lydia Nyachieo is the winner of a prestigious Marshall Scholarship, which gives high achieving U.S. students the opportunity to study at the graduate level at any university in the United Kingdom. The UW announced on Monday that she is among the 41 winners selected from nearly 1,000 applicants from public and private colleges and universities across the United States.
Nyachieo, who is part of UW-Madison’s Precollege Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence (PEOPLE), serves as an editor and staff writer for The Wisconsin International Review, an undergraduate magazine, according to a press release from UW News, and is the recipient of the prestigious Newman Family Scholarship, given to the most promising undergraduate students studying global affairs.
Nyachieo told Doug Erickson of UW News that she intends to use the scholarship to earn a master’s degree in international development through the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester.
“Its master’s program covers a broad field of issues that I’m most interested in: poverty and inequality, governance and management, the global political economy, and the environment,” Nyachieo said in the interview. “I also like how the Global Development Institute takes a critical, inclusive and action-oriented look at global development, where development isn’t the ‘Global North’ helping or teaching the ‘Global South,’ but rather seeing how all countries can improve in ways that contribute toward a more equitable and sustainable world.”
The Marshall Scholarship Program was established in 1953 to honor the ideals of the Marshall Plan and to foster an appreciation of the UK among future U.S. leaders. Up to 50 Marshall Scholars are selected each year to study at the graduate level at a UK institution in any field of study.
“Marshall Scholars are considered among the top undergraduate university students in the United States,” says Provost Karl Scholz. “The competition is intense and the selection process long and rigorous. This is a tremendous honor for Lydia, and we’re thrilled as a university to be playing a role in her education and in helping to launch what will surely be an impressive career.”
