University of Notre Dame senior Brian Boyd, a philosophy major from Georgetown, Texas, and junior Rachel Miller, a political science and theology major from St. Louis, recently were awarded prestigious Honors Fellowships from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).
Named among only 50 ofthe nations most talented undergraduatesselected from schools including Harvard, Stanford and Yale Universities for 2007, Boyd and Miller attended an ISI summer conference in Québec City, Canada, titledLaw in the Western Tradition: Common, Constitutional, Natural, and Divine,at which they explored questions of contemporary politics, natural justice, natural law and natural rights.They engaged in high-level, one-on-one debate and discussion with elite faculty who teach in the humanities and social sciences.
Boyd and Miller, who both have earned Deans List honors in each semester of their college careers, will participate in a yearlong program designed to enhance their undergraduate education at Notre Dame.It will include an ISI Career Development Seminar and continuing direction from their faculty mentors through online discussions.The mentors also will provide insight on internships, job opportunities, graduate and professional programs and related issues, and the students each will receive large collections of free books and journals.
Boyd, the executive editor of the Irish Rover, an independent student publication, also is involved in Sustained Dialogue, a student group dedicated to improving race relations on campus, and serves on the advisory board for Notre Dame Magazine.Last spring, he studied in Rome at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (commonly called the Angelicum) and plans to pursue graduate studies in philosophy.
Miller, also an editor of the Irish Rover, spent the summer serving at Maggie’s Place, a hospitality home for troubled pregnant women in Phoenix, as part of a Summer Service Learning Project through Notre Dame’s Alumni Association and Center for Social Concerns.She is a member of Notre Dame Saint Marys Right to Life and Pi Sigma Alpha, the political science honor society.
Founded in 1953, ISI works to identify the best and the brightest college students and to nurture in these future leaders the American ideal of ordered liberty.
For additional information on the ISI Honors Program, visit www.isi.org .
p.
TopicID: 24330