‘So meaningful to so many’: UMBC gets its first Rhodes Scholar in school history

Earlier this week, Lee Blaney showed up for a morning class at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he works as an associate professor. He was at the front of the room getting ready, doing professor stuff. Then he heard his students begin to cheer.

“I was like, ‘What’s happening?’ I looked up, and Naomi had walked in,” Blaney said. “She stole the show.”

Honestly, maybe Naomi Mburu should get used to that, because the 21-year-old chemical engineering major has become a bit of a celebrity at the school. She was this month named a Rhodes scholar, becoming the first UMBC student to win the prestigious award.

“The whole department is very proud of her accomplishments,” Blaney said. “We’re hoping to find more Naomis in the coming years.”

The Rhodes Scholarship, which sends recipients to study at the University of Oxford in England, is a remarkable achievement, both for Mburu and the institution that has shepherded her. After Mburu’s friends learned she had earned the Rhodes, they threw her a surprise party in her apartment. When the president of her university learned, he began to cry.

“It was so meaningful to so many,” university President Freeman Hrabowski said. “Everybody gets excited about athletics, but we need to get as excited about the life of the mind, and about preparing leaders. And we are passionate here about that.”

Mburu, the daughter of immigrants from Kenya, is one of 32 American students to receive the Rhodes and one of a handful with Washington-area ties this year. This year’s group of Rhodes scholars includes 10 African American students, the most ever elected in an American class, according to a Rhodes Trust news release.

Mburu learned she was a winner after she and other finalists, including the Naval Academy’s Nathan Bermel, went through interviews for the scholarship.

Mburu and Bermel played Uno as they awaited the decision. When their names were announced, he asked her to pinch him, to make sure this was real.

She did. It was.

“I’ve just been getting a lot of text messages and emails and calls from people, some people I don’t even know, just congratulating me and telling me how much it means to not just me, but to the entire UMBC community, and also the African American community,” Mburu said.

At her university, Mburu, a senior from Ellicott City, Md., serves as a peer mentor for younger students interested in chemical engineering. She is passionate about supporting …

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