MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — Olivia Bailey, a Middlebury College senior from Londonderry, Vt., has been awarded a prestigious Keasbey Scholarship to support two years of graduate study at the University of Oxford.
Bailey, a double major in philosophy and French, will pursue a graduate bachelor of philosophy degree, or B.Phil., at Oxford’s New College. The demanding two-year B.Phil. program, equivalent to a master’s degree, includes three taught courses and a research thesis. Bailey, who received word of her Keasbey Scholarship and her acceptance into the competitive New College program this past winter, expects to take classes in political philosophy, moral philosophy, and Kant. The B.Phil. program, she hopes, will give her a broad preparation for work toward a Ph.D., and a chance to pursue further her research interest in the philosophy of technology.
A Vermonter who came to Middlebury from the Long Trail School in Dorset, Vt. — named for the wilderness footpath that runs the length of the state — Bailey was just 16 when she arrived at the College, and will graduate in May at age 20. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa following her junior year, Bailey has been a College Scholar throughout her Middlebury career.
In addition to her studies, she’s kept busy at Middlebury as president of the le Cercle Français (a.k.a. the French Club), and has lived for two years in the French House at 51 Franklin Street. She’s spent a lot of her free time as a peer writing tutor, and is active in the Middlebury College Mountain Club, taking part in rock-climbing, biking and hiking, and leading a Middlebury Outdoor Orientation (MOO) trip for first-year students. A cross-country skier and a one-time coxswain with the Middlebury crew team, she’s also an accomplished whitewater canoeist and kayaker.
Bailey spent her junior year at the Middlebury College School Abroad at the Université de Poitiers, about 180 miles southeast of Paris. Her year in France unfortunately included a three-month-long student strike, over a government proposal that would have allowed companies to fire young workers without cause during their first two years on the job. It was a challenge, she says, but she used the opportunity to pursue “an independent project on Rousseau’s theory of primitive language.” She feels the year abroad “prepared me for whatever I’ll find at Oxford. It helped me become more self-sufficient.”
She’s looking forward to her time at New College. While Middlebury has relatively few philosophy majors, “The philosophy department at Oxford has enough students to support several philosophical societies,” Bailey wrote in an essay about her Keasbey scholarship. She’s looking forward to studying in a program whose students “are focused on philosophy and have developed interests in specific topics. I am certain I will learn a great deal through conversation with fellow B.Phil. students.”
After her graduation from Middlebury in May, she expects to spend a second summer as a teaching assistant in philosophy at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth, in Carlisle, Pa., on the campus of Dickinson College. And somewhere between commencement and her departure for Oxford, where her classes begin October 2, she thinks she might just try hiking the length of Vermont on the Long Trail.
Background on Keasbey Scholarships
Awarded by the Henry Griffith Keasbey and Anna Griffith Keasbey Memorial Foundation, Keasbey Scholarships are available on a rotating basis to students from some of the top colleges and universities in the country: Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Haverford, Princeton, Swarthmore, Wesleyan and Yale, in addition to Middlebury. Students from Middlebury are eligible every three years. Olivia Bailey was one of the two scholarship recipients this year; the other went to a student from Bowdoin College.
Designed to promote Anglo-American relations and provide American students with an opportunity to experience the British educational system, the scholarships support two years of study at selected British universities: Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Edinburgh and University College of Wales at Aberystwyth.
The award consists of a payment to the British institution to cover tuition and other fixed charges, a cost of living stipend for the scholar to cover board, lodging and general subsistence, and an allowance for travel between the U.S. and Great Britain. The stipend is approximately equal to that of the Rhodes Scholarship.
Three nominees from each college are invited to Philadelphia, home base for the Keasbey Foundation, for personal interviews. The criteria for selection as a scholar include academic excellence, active participation in extracurricular activities, leadership abilities and personal promise.