Scholars 2008/2009

Sarah Reed

Sarah Reed, 22, is from Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. She is a recent graduate of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she majored in History and Environmental Studies. On campus, Sarah was involved with a variety of advocacy and fundraising organizations, including Tsunami and Hurricane Relief Coalitions, Students Take Action Now: Darfur, and the Environmental Organizers Network.

Looking to the future, Sarah hopes to use her education to help address the unequal impacts of climate change on human communities worldwide. She is thrilled to be spending a year at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Environmental and Climate Studies, and is very grateful to the St. Andrews Society and Miss Margaret Macmillan for their generous support.

Jane Fox

Being half American and half Scottish meant that, whilst growing up, I divided my time between my home in the Scottish Borders and Puget Sound in Washington State. My education and cultural background, however, is entirely Scottish. I attended local schools before moving to Edinburgh in my gap year and taking a foundation course at Leith School of Art. I gained my degree in English Literature from the University of St Andrews and was awarded a first class honours MA. I am now a student of Photojournalism at Boston University. I hope that, with the aid of a final semester in Washington DC, to refine political reportage and foreign correspondence. Failing that, I suppose there is always wedding photography.

Finlay Young

Finlay Young is studying for a Masters in Law at the University of Pennsylvania, having gained a first class honors degree in Law from Glasgow University. He has undertaken legal work for Glasgow University, the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and more recently for the Council of Europe. As a freelance journalist, he writes a weekly newspaper column and reports on the Arts. He’s a keen soccer player, musician and compulsive bookworm. He hopes to experience working life in the US, NGO work in East Africa, and then eventually return to Scotland to teach, write and play golf.

Caroline Teague

I am an American History major and a Secondary Education minor at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. History has always been a part of my life. Having grown up in historic Ipswich, Massachusetts, I developed a curiosity and fascination about how the lives of people from years past have influenced our own modern manners and habits.

I studied abroad at the University of Edinburgh during my junior year of college and I fell in love with the city, the country and the people. There was history all around me!

When I returned the States that summer, I took an internship at the Heard House Museum in Ipswich, transcribing the diairies, letters and personal papers of Augustine Heard, head of Augustine Heard and Company, an American trading company based out of Canton, China during the height of the Opium Wars. Heard's Company was the American counterpart to Jardine Matheson and Company, a well-established British company run by two Scotsman who both attended the University of Edinburgh--James Matheson and William Jardine. I have always been interested in social history and so I applied to the University of Edinburgh for an MSc by Research in history, to which I was accepted. I will be studying how the social experiences of the American men differed from those of the Scottish and British men working at these two companies during a very unstable time in China's history.

Once I complete this degree I am turning my sights to teaching, which has always been at the heart of what I do. Having completed the certification and licensing program at Wheaton College through my 5 month student teaching stint at Mansfield High School, Massachusetts, I am now licensed to teach 8-12 grade Social Studies. I plan to teach at the Secondary level for a few years before pursuing my doctorate in History and becoming a professor at a university.

Without the generosity of the St. Andrew's Society of New York, I would never be able to pursue my studies at the University of Edinburgh next year. I am extraordinarily grateful to the society for their encouragement, support and financial assistance. Classes begin September 16, 2009 and it can not come soon enough!