Daily Trojan USC.edu

Issue date: 11/27/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Joshua Sy | Daily Trojan Triple threat | Rhodes Scholar Reed Doucette is a Presidential Scholar, a community service advocate and a varsity athlete.

A senior majoring in mechanical engineering has been named USC's first Rhodes Scholar since 1995.

Reed T. Doucette is one of two California students to receive the 2008 Rhodes Scholarship.

More than 750 students from about 295 colleges and universities nationwide vied for the prestigious scholarship to Oxford University.

Thirty-two of the 80 scholarships granted annually are given to students in the United States.

"It's really great to be able to represent USC and the entire Trojan Family," Doucette said.

The scholarship generally awards individuals who demonstrate extraordinary academic success and athletic involvement, said Bryce Nelson, the USC Rhodes Scholarship representative and chair of the USC Committee on National and International Graduate Fellowships. In addition to these qualities, winners must display a genuine desire to improve the world around them - and Doucette does.

"I'd like to be involved in causes to advance the well-being of mankind," he said.

Rhodes Scholarships are particularly desirable worldwide because "they are given to people who are both scholastically very adept as well as athletically very involved - and as we all know, that's a fairly rare combination," said James L. Heft, a USC expert in higher education. "Secondly, they are given by a university that is recognized worldwide as a high-quality institution."

Noosha Malek, the interim director for academic recognition programs, said the Rhodes Scholarship is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for students.

"The Rhodes Scholarship is the oldest and most high-profile award for international study that has maintained its prestige for over a century," Malek said.

Doucette is a USC Presidential Scholar with a 3.97 GPA, Nelson said. He also co-founded Los Angeles Community Impact, an organization that provides consulting services to local non profit organizations with business-related challenges.

"[The Rhodes committee] wants people who are leaders, people who are compassionate about what's going on around them and serving others," Doucette said.

Cecil Rhodes, founder of the scholarship, outlined how the scholarship should operate in his will. In addition to scholarship and service, he indicated that recipients' qualities are usually exemplified in sports.

Doucette has also played on the USC men's basketball team for the past four years, something he said he plans to continue at Oxford.

"I think that sports will be a great way to meet a lot of people over there," he said.

Doucette said he also wakeboards, plays tennis and is teaching himself to play the banjo.

He said he plans to continue his studies in engineering science at Oxford as well. Doucette is conducting research in chemistry, physics, engineering and biology to optimize the efficiency of solar cells.

"Lawrence Livermore National Lab was my first exposure to working in a lab," Doucette said. "It was really awesome to be a part of such cutting edge science. I met a lot of really bright and talented people who were able to give me a lot of insight to a future career in science."

He said he is excited about traveling to England, because when he visited Europe this summer, he realized just how expansive the world is.

"You're just one person of billions in the world right now and billions that have existed over the course of time. But on the other hand, every individual has the capacity to make a difference and impact the world in a meaningful way," he said.

Doucette said the honor came as a surprise. The 15 finalists for the California region were sitting in a small waiting room playing cards and talking when he and Asya J. Passinsky, from UC Berkeley, were told they were the two scholarship recipients.

"You don't expect to get that kind of news," he said. "I was a little bit jittery, and I shook all the committee members' and the other finalists' hands and thanked them."

Malek said the California district is considered to be one of the most competitive application regions for the Rhodes Scholarship because of its size and the number of prestigious universities in the state.

Nelson said USC has produced a growing number of competitive scholarship candidates in recent years.

USC has won five Marshall Scholarships since 2000 and nine Fulbright Scholarships in the last year.

"There's no question that there has been a trajectory at USC that is rather extraordinary, over the last 15 years in particular," Heft said.

Doucette said that despite his outstanding résumé and academic success, the competition was steep.

"As well prepared as you may be, there's a lot of luck involved. It's one of those things you're extremely fortunate to be able to win," he said.

Nelson said Doucette is the ninth Rhodes Scholar in USC history, several of whom went on to become professors at USC.

"[Doucette] is an exceptional person in both intelligence and athletic ability. He really conveys a kind of integrity that I'm sure appealed a lot to the committee and the people who know him," Nelson said.

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