Craig Pearson, an Honors College senior majoring in neuroscience, biochemistry and molecular biology in the College of Natural Science and English in the College of Arts and Letters, has been selected to interview for the Rhodes Scholarship in Chicago on Nov. 22.
If awarded, Pearson would become MSU’s 17th Rhodes Scholar.
“Craig is a phenomenal candidate for the Rhodes Scholarship because of his leadership across campus, his enthusiasm and skill for academics and his dedication to helping others,” said Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore, dean of the MSU Honors College. “We wish Craig the best as he heads to his final interview next month.”
Volunteering in high school, Pearson worked with students with visual impairments. If awarded the Rhodes Scholarship, Pearson plans to pursue his doctoral degree in neuroscience from Oxford University.
“How the brain processes what it sees, perception – all of that stuff gets me really excited,” Pearson said. “Being able to utilize that interest and that passion and that ability to then affect people in a positive way and do things to bring some vision to people who don’t have it really makes me tick.”
Pearson is from Bloomfield Hills and graduated from University of Detroit Jesuit High School. He entered MSU as an Alumni Distinguished Scholarship recipient and now serves as an undergraduate research assistant in the MSU Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences and an undergraduate lab manager and lead undergraduate researcher for the MSU Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab.
He has served as a clinical volunteer at the MSU Department of Neurology and Ophthalmology. Pearson also is the student managing editor for ReCUR, the Red Cedar Undergraduate Research Journal, and is the founder and managing editor of Exceptions: The Art and Literary Journal for Students with Visual Disabilities.
Pearson was named a Goldwater Scholar in 2012 and he served on MSU's 2013-14 Homecoming Court.
The Rhodes Trust, the oldest of the major international competitive award foundations, provides 32 of the most outstanding undergraduates in the country an opportunity to study at the University of Oxford in England.