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Smith College Senior Clarke Knight is one of just 32 people nationwide chosen to be
a Rhodes Scholar for 2014 certainly one of the highest honors a college student can receive
and we are pleased to have clarke knight here with us in the studio this evening. hi congradulation
thank you it is it is a huge huge honor tell me about the process you i'd kinda assumed
you get a phone call or a letter comes in the mail after you've submitted your paperwork
that really it's a very kind of difficult process at least to methat you go through
when you find out you've been chose a rhodes scholar yes it starts at a cocktail party
the night before and then the next day is all day interviewing and um after that you
sit in a room with all the other amazing candidates and wait for several long hours while the
judges deliberate and they call you back and announce it and thirty two people are selected
yeah so there's this whole group of and thank goodness you're one of the two i can't imagine
how hard its gotta be to be one of the one's who's name isn't called but well we don't
have to worry about that with you we wont talk about that but i've gotta ask you again
one of 32 people nationwide you're only i believe the third person from smith chose
the first person who's an american student of smith college chosen the other two both
were from africa ironically enough not to embarass you but smith is a place with a lot
of very accomplished people i don't have to tell you that but you suddenly find yourself
a little bit of a celebrity on campus this is a big deal i've had fifteen minutes of
fame um yeah it's been overwhelming but people are so supportive and kind yeah let's talk
about what led you to your scholarship if you will you grew up in henderson nevada thats
in the mojave desert did that hash kind of environment influence your interest in the
areas of environmental science that you plan to make your area of study yes i mean the
fact that there's so little water in nevada that i grew up in a period of drought um being
in the desert has shaped my thinking about environmental limits and resources and how
we manage those resources and that has put me on this trajectory for environmental policy
and combining that with science. now you're a chemistry major which right away i mean
you're out of my league ok just so you know they only way i got through high school chemistry
was lab partner was a guy who went on to be a professional chemist, he did all the work
i wrote all the papers well anyways just so we know where we are at here talking at oxford
you want to focus on science based environmental policy basically i guess correct me if i am
wrong asking nations governments industries to base their policies on scientific facts
yes now that whole area of global warming remains very controversial for many people
have you thought about the policy hornets nest that you kinda want to make your life's
work and your area of study I it's definitely going to be a challenging field that's for
sure um i mean even i would say first off is let's call it what it really is and that's
probably most accurately climate chaos instead of global warming and so i mean there's so
many things we can do to really move along on this issue you're looking at a career though
to some extent where you'll be fighting every day i mean not long ago we had a terrific
professor in here who was a renowned world expert he's at umass ray bradley and he's
written a book about the politics of global warming and he's basically at times been threatened
been told look basically you get off this topic or you're going to see research dollars
dry up and you're going to see things happen this is i mean you very consciously chosen
and i don't mean to make you this about politics our discussion but you've chosen an area that's
not just going to be research it's going to be research and battle maybe yes i mean the
people who are in the trenches of policy making and accord making have a difficult job but
i really see my role as a person who can translate and come from the science side and um bridge
those two cultures that are going on now because they're not thy're not talking to each other
enough so now you've done research projects in tazmania with the national center for disease
control and prevention very very ah high profile work but your senior thesis was locally based
about the soil chemistry of the Avery Brook watershed in west whately how was that chosen
i became involved in the research of a geologist at smith named bob newton and i got involved
with his lab and you know we had talked about ok i really want to combine chemistry and
geology and do an interdepartmental thesis and he's been doing work in avery brook and
the applalacians for several years decades actually and um he said ok there's and interesting
project about the soil chemistry and at the macro level we have climate change going on
and then at this level we want to see how is the soil going to change um with warming
and with an invasive species of worms so my project is really focusing on those two things
now i know you're on the varsity crew the cross country team at smith and in your downtime
and i can't imagine when that is ha yeah but you've written a book in a totally different
area footnotes in architecture a history of women architects what led you in that direction
well smith has a fantastic program called uh the stride program and so it pairs you
as an incoming first year with a professor whose also doing research and so i was given
this topic and together with professor james middlebrook and the artchitecture department
i started researching women architects and really started thinking about you know why
are there so few women who have really made it to the top of the field and you know continued
in architecture um and then that research culminated and we thought you know our findings
are very interesting and they could be best put to a book format and that's what it really
became um so i mean that i think is so illustrative of what a smith college education can do for
you is those concrete experiences with professors its fabulous you've got a couple of fascinating
years ahead of you at oxford long term crystal ball careerwise what do you want to do where
do you you hope to see yourself in oh ten year's let's say ah probably international
policy and environmental policy maybe doing work um with the EPA back in the United States
so I'm not sure of where a couple things are bouncing around in my head right now but i'm
not sure well you got time and you got a lot of opportunity have a great time at oxford
we are all very proud of you clarke knight rhodes scholar for 2014 thanks for coming
in thank you