Midshipman 1st Class (senior) Frederick Sutton, 23, of Wayzata, Minn. and Midshipman 1st Class (senior) Ross Gilchriest, 21, of Silsbee, Texas, have been selected as Schwarzman Scholars. Only 129 scholarships were awarded this year to students from 30 different countries and 75 universities.
Sutton is a Quantitative Economics major and serves as a squad leader in 17th Company while actively staying involved with the STEM outreach group and participating in numerous community service activities. During his time at the academy he traveled to Suzhou, China, to study Chinese language through State Department-sponsored Critical Language Scholarship program. Sutton also interned at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and studied abroad for a semester at Peking University in Beijing, China, where he was enrolled in economics courses taught in Mandarin. This past spring Sutton was also among 54 college juniors nationwide to be awarded the Truman Scholarship, a nationwide public service fellowship. Through the Schwarzman Scholars program Sutton will pursue a master’s in Global Affairs with a concentration in international studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and is interested in learning more about the economic relationship between the United States and China. Following his time in the Schwarzman Scholars program, Sutton will report to Nuclear Power School in Charleston, S.C., where he will begin the training pipeline to join the submarine force.
Gilchriest is a History major with an emphasis on early twentieth-century intellectual networks in Britain and the United States. Over the past four years he has participated in the Naval Academy Leadership and Foreign Affairs Conferences, acted as the President of the Naval Academy’s professional publication, The Profession, and has played offensive line on the Navy Sprint Football team. In the summer of 2015, he participated in a month-long cultural immersion trip to China with a group of fellow midshipmen to study the strategic culture of China and its implications for U.S. foreign policy. This past summer he conducted independent research at the Nietzsche-Haus in Sils-Maria, Switzerland, and at the British Library in London in support of his honors thesis discussing the work of Dr. Oscar Levy to translate the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche into English. As a Schwarzman Scholar, he will earn a master’s degree in Global Affairs with an emphasis on international studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Following his graduate studies, Gilchriest will report to The Basic School in Quantico, Va. to begin training as an officer in the United States Marine Corps.
Schwarzman Scholarships provide a year of study at the Schwarzman College of Tsinghua University in Beijing. Schwarzman Scholars are chosen based on academic aptitude and intellectual ability, leadership potential, entrepreneurial spirit, ability to anticipate paradigm changes, exemplary character, and desire to understand other cultures, perspectives and positions. The inaugural class was enrolled in 2016 and the program was inspired by the Rhodes Scholarship, which was founded in 1902 to promote international understanding and peace, and is designed to meet the challenges of the 21st century and beyond. Blackstone Co-Founder Stephen A. Schwarzman personally contributed $100 million to the program and is leading a fundraising campaign to raise an additional $350 million from private sources to endow the program in perpetuity. The $450 million endowment will support up to 200 scholars annually from the U.S., China, and around the world for a one-year Master’s Degree program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of China’s most prestigious universities and an indispensable base for the country’s scientific and technological research.
For more information on the Schwarzman Scholars, visit http://schwarzmanscholars.org/.
For more information about the Naval Academy, please visit www.usna.edu
