Georgetown senior Courtney Peterson (COL ’02) is one of 40 students nationwide to receive the prestigious George C. Marshall scholarship to attend graduate school in England. Funded by the British government, the scholarships recognize outstanding academic excellence and leadership potential.
“This is a wonderful honor for an outstanding young scholar,” Georgetown College Dean Jane McAuliffe said. “It speaks highly of her dedication to her academic career.”
Peterson is the eighth Georgetown student since 1991 to receive a Marshall scholarship and the only recipient this year from D.C.-area schools. The scholarships have been awarded since 1953 as a representation of Europe’s gratitude for American economic assistance after World War II under the Marshall Plan.
A physics and biology major, Peterson will use the scholarship to pay for two years of tuition at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. She said she hopes to eventually become a university professor of introductory physics and to conduct research in relativity, elementary particle theory or astrophysics. She would also like to write science books for the general public.
Peterson said she became interested in applying for the Marshall scholarship upon hearing about a special math and physics program offered at Cambridge. The one-year program, with about 80 different courses to choose from, “sounded absolutely fantastic, totally up my alley,” she said.
Winning the scholarship, she said, made her “very, very happy. Probably the happiest I have ever been.”
Peterson said her interest in science was sparked by a high school internship at the National Institutes of Health: “I realized that I really enjoyed the logic and methodological approach behind science and I decided to major in some combination of sciences.”
Georgetown’s advanced programs for biology students also developed her interest. “The friendly atmosphere of the [Georgetown] physics department and the research opportunities afforded by the Georgetown-Hughes Undergraduate Program in Biology were especially important to fueling my interest in science,” Peterson added.
The program, which is sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute in Chevy Chase, Md., provides an accelerated four-year course of study for biology students. It also allows for advanced course-work and undergraduate research opportunities in the fields of neuroscience and molecular biology.
“Georgetown has given me a solid and very broad background in science,” Peterson said. “I am very indebted to the large number of excellent professors at Georgetown.”
A native of Arlington, Va., Peterson has been an active member of the Georgetown community as a member of the Phi Betta Kappa honor society and the Georgetown Emergency Response Medical Service.
She has participated in concert and mass choir in addition to serving as a board member of the Journal of Young Investigators, Inc., a student-run corporation that promotes innovative training programs for undergraduate science majors. A Goldwater Scholar in mathematics, a Clare Boothe Luce Scholar in science and a Georgetown-Hughes Undergraduate Scholar, Peterson is also a physics teaching assistant.
