For the second time in three years, a graduate of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has received a prestigious Marshall Scholarship for graduate study in the United Kingdom.
With the scholarship, Josephine (Josie) Chambers, of Champaign, plans to pursue master’s degrees in integrated resource management at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and in conservation leadership at the University of Cambridge in England. Only about 40 students in the United States are chosen each year to receive the all-expenses-paid scholarship.
Chambers graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois in May 2010 in integrative biology with minors in anthropology and chemistry. She was also a James Scholar in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
She is U of I’s first Marshall Scholar since 2007, when Ian Clausen, who received undergraduate degrees in English and religious studies, received the scholarship. It is a rare honor, with Chambers and Clausen being the only two recipients from the U of I since 1996.
Chambers plans a career uniting efforts to develop sustainable and equitable tropical forest-management plans. She is currently working in a village in Peru as a project assistant with Neotropical Primate Conservation, an organization devoted to protecting the habitat of the endangered yellow-tailed woolly monkey.
At Illinois, she worked on genomic aspects of brain and behavior, performing bee brain dissections and molecular analyses. After her sophomore year, she assisted a doctoral student from Washington State University on a study of the influence of tourism on monkeys in Costa Rica.
In East Africa the following summer, Chambers investigated primate feeding ecology, as part of a broader project led by a U of I doctoral candidate in anthropology. There, Chambers worked alongside Ugandans to assist in monitoring the foraging behavior of red colobus monkeys.
Chambers co-founded a campus branch of the organization Roots and Shoots to advocate for environmental justice. She also co-organized a University-sponsored conservation lecture series and developed an environmental education program at Westview Elementary School in Champaign.
Chambers also performed as one of the few non-music majors in the U of I Chorale, and performed in the University production of Puccini's opera La Boheme. She also is an accomplished distance runner, having finished in the top 3 percent of more than 3,300 female runners in the Illinois half-marathon held during the last week of classes in May.
The Marshall Scholarship Program was created as a way for the British government to show appreciation for American efforts to rebuild the UK and Europe after World War II. Students chosen for the program are “talented, independent, and wide-ranging,” according to the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission, which runs the program. Since 1954, about 1,500 Americans have been named Marshall Scholars.
