TWO AT WASHINGTON U. ARE RHODES SCHOLARS

Like everyone else stuck on an airport tarmac in Minnesota Sunday
morning, Bethany Ehlmann couldn't wait to take off.

Most of the other passengers, though, weren't sitting on the same news
Ehlmann was.

Ehlmann and Allison Gilmore, two Washington University seniors, were
among the 32 American college students selected as Rhodes Scholars for
2004, the scholarship trust announced Sunday.

"First of all, it's a great honor," Ehlmann, 21, said in a telephone
interview from a winter storm-stalled airport in Minneapolis-St. Paul
as she waited to return to St. Louis. The final Rhodes Scholar
interviews were conducted in Minnesota. "I was really surprised
because there are so many qualified people."

Ehlmann, who grew up in Tallahassee, Fla., is a double major in earth
and planetary sciences and environmental studies. In 2000, her family
moved to Edwardsville, where her father, Bryon Ehlmann, teaches
computer science at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

"This will be an incredible opportunity," Ehlmann said. "This opens up
a lot of doors, and it's a great opportunity to experience another
culture."

Ehlmann and Gilmore will enter England's University of Oxford in
October, 100 years after the first class of American Rhodes Scholars
did in 1904. The scholars were selected from 963 applicants endorsed
by 366 colleges and universities. The scholarships provide two or
three years of study at Oxford.

The two soon-to-be graduates became the fifth and sixth Washington
University students in the last five years to be named Rhodes scholars.

For Gilmore, a 22-year-old math major, two years in England will offer
her a unique perspective as a masters degree candidate in sociology,
she said.

"Bottom line, I get to spend two years at Oxford," Gilmore, a native
of Eagan, Minn., said in a telephone interview. "It's important
because I've been involved in activism - the anti-war movement last
spring and drug reform - and this will be important to me to be
outside the U.S."

Gilmore is president of Washington University's students for a
sensible drug policy.

Michael Cannon, Washington University's executive vice chancellor and
general counsel, assisted Ehlmann and Gilmore in the Rhodes
Scholarship application. Cannon himself was a Rhodes scholar from 1973
to 1975.

"Bethany and Alli are wonderfully accomplished in their extremely
demanding principal fields," said Cannon, who chairs a postgraduate
committee on scholarships and fellowships. "They're extensively
engaged in a wide variety of organizational pursuits. They're also
warm, open and good-humored young women."

The university endorsed six candidates for the Rhodes Scholarship, all
of whom made it to the state finals, Cannon said.

"This will end up broadening their outlook intellectually, politically
and otherwise," he said.

Rhodes Scholarships were created in 1902 by the will of British
philanthropist Cecil Rhodes. Winners are selected on the basis of high
academic achievement, personal integrity, leadership potential and
physical vigor, among other attributes.

The American students will join an international group of scholars
selected from 18 other nations around the world. About 95 scholars are
selected annually.

With the elections announced Sunday, 3,014 Americans have won Rhodes
Scholarships, representing 306 colleges and universities.

"I will make this observation: The (Washington University) faculty
guide and inspire these students year in and year out," Cannon said.
"Then high-octane students like Bethany and Alli do the rest."