English major is among 32 Americans selected
By: David Campbell
A Princeton University English major and novelist is among the 32 Americans selected as Rhodes Scholars this year, the Rhodes Trust announced Saturday.
Princeton senior Jeffrey A. Miller will join an international group of roughly 85 people chosen from around the world to travel to England and attend the University of Oxford in October.
Mr. Miller, a native of Plano, Texas, majors in English at Princeton and also is pursuing a certificate in creative writing. He is at work on a novel as his senior thesis, which he said he hopes to publish once it is finished.
He serves as an officer of the Ivy Club at Princeton and is a member of the Human Values Forum, and has served as co-editor-in-chief of Green Light, the campus literary magazine.
He played junior varsity basketball and has interned at publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He plans to pursue a career as a writer and English professor.
Mr. Miller said he will spend his first year pursuing a master’s degree in English literature from 1550 to 1780 focusing on the work of John Milton and other writers of the Restoration period and then hopes to begin working toward a doctorate in English.
The Rhodes Scholar said Monday that his new title is a great responsibility, one he said compels him to strive harder to live up to.
"It’s a great honor, but it’s also a great responsibility," he said. "It just hasn’t sunken in yet at all. It’s an incredible feeling to think that you’re a Rhodes Scholar."
Princeton English Professor Nigel Smith, who taught Mr. Miller and two other undergraduates in a graduate seminar on Milton last year, called him "a very remarkable young man" and "a future leader" whose career promises to be an exciting one.
Mr. Miller has also studied with novelists Edmund White, Chang-rae Lee and Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton.
"Jeff is an impressive, multi-talented young man with a persistent and probing intellect, and possesses as well a deep artistic curiosity and wonderfully mature sense of enduring humanistic concerns like family, honor and love," Professor Lee said.
Lawrence resident Sasha-Mae Eccleston, who is a senior at Brown University, where she is studying Greek and Latin, also was among the 32 Americans chosen this year.
The Rhodes Scholars were chosen from among 903 applicants from 333 colleges and universities nationwide.
In addition to the 32 from the United States, scholars come from countries including Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Jamaica, Kenya and Pakistan, among others.
Rhodes Scholarships provide two to three years of study at Oxford. The scholarship, established in 1902 by the estate of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes, is the oldest for international study available to American students. The first class of American Rhodes Scholars entered Oxford in 1904.
Including those named on Saturday, 3,078 Americans have won Rhodes Scholarships, representing 307 colleges and universities. Women have been eligible since 1976. A total of 369 American women have been named to date.
The value of the Rhodes Scholarship varies depending on the academic field, the degree and the Oxford college chosen. The Rhodes Trust pays all college and university fees, provides a stipend for expenses while at Oxford, and covers transportation to and from England. The total value is approximately $40,000 per year, the trust said.
Applicants are chosen based on criteria set forth in Mr. Rhodes’ will, including high academic achievement, integrity of character, potential for leadership and physical vigor. Mr. Rhodes wrote that scholars should "esteem the performance of public duties as their highest aim," the trust said.
Including Mr. Miller, Princeton has had 186 U.S.-born winners of Rhodes Scholarships since 1904, said university spokesman Eric Quinones.

