SMBHC students Jarvis Benson, Jaz Brisack, and Allen Coon are Truman Scholarship Finalists! They will now advance to regional interviews in Nashville on March 13. The final selections will be announced on April 18.

Jarvis is from Grenada, Mississippi and is an International Studies and Spanish major who plans to obtain a Master of Science of Foreign Affairs from Georgetown University and work as a Foreign Service Officer with the US Agency for International Development working in Latin America. He has volunteered with Mississippi Votes, The Esperanza Project, Leap Frog, and College Democrats.

Jaz is from Oxford, Mississippi, by way of Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina (where she was home-schooled). She is a General Studies major who plans to get a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa and work on improving labor rights by imbedding herself in communities and writing about their needs. She is on the University of Mississippi debate team and has interned for the United Auto Workers, volunteered for the Sunflower Freedom Project and led the campaign of Morris Mock for Mississippi House District 60.

Allen is from Petal Mississippi and is a Public Policy Leadership and African American Studies major with a minor in Sociology. He plans to get a Public Policy/JD degree from the University of California at Berkeley and return to Mississippi to work on civil rights, voting rights, and education in Mississippi. He has worked with the NAACP, Black Lives Matter, Mississippi Vote Everywhere, and Young Democrats of Mississippi.

ALL THREE OF YOU MAKE US PROUD! Good luck in Nashville!

UM’s last Truman Scholar was Chelsea Caveny (SMBHC 11) in 2010.

For a complete list of 2018 Truman Finalists, visit here. For a full story on this exciting news, click here.

For more information on the Truman Scholarship and other major scholarships, visit the Office of National Scholarship Advisement.

Jarvis Benson (top left), Jaz Brisack, and Allen Coon