LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Monica Marks defied the odds by making it to college — something no one in her extended family had done. Now the Rush, Ky., native has claimed one of the most coveted academic awards.

Marks, a graduate of the University of Louisville, has been named a Rhodes Scholar.

“Growing up, the discussion wasn’t about what college you would go to, it was whether or not you were even going to college,” she told The Courier-Journal of Louisville. “The idea of going to university and getting a degree, much less getting a Rhodes, didn’t even fall within our purview.”

Marks, 23, grew up in Rush, Ky., among fundamentalist Jehovah’s Witnesses. Neither of her parents graduated from high school, and no one in her extended family went to college. She graduated from Russell Independent High School in 2004, according to the university’s Web site.

She said she constantly asked her parents for books to feed her appetite for reading.

“I was an insatiable reader and my parents got me books,” she said. “I read all the things I wasn’t supposed to read about — philosophy, feminism. ... I realized at an early age that I didn’t just want to read about things, that I would have to explore bigger things and that education was part and parcel to that.”

She learned she won the scholarship Saturday, after interviewing with selection officials in Indianapolis along with other finalists from Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio.

She’ll spend the next two years at Oxford University, in England, studying for a master’s of philosophy degree in modern Middle Eastern culture.

Her studies in Islamic law have already taken her to Jordan, Tanzania and Tunisia. She’s now studying in Turkey during her year as a Fulbright Scholar — the prestigious academic award she won last year.

Marks’ two years at Oxford will follow a career at the university that has made her one of the school’s most decorated scholars.

University of Louisville President James Ramsey called her “a superstar at UofL” and said the school is “very proud of her and we just congratulate her.”

He said Marks’ Rhodes Scholarship “is a reaffirmation of our ability to recruit the best students from across Kentucky ... and a reaffirmation of the quality of our undergraduate programs.”

Marks came to UofL through its Hallmark Scholars Program that gave her full tuition and room and board.

She plans to eventually attend law school, where she will continue to focus on Islamic law.

 

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