Valley Native, Taft High Grad Named Rhodes Scholar

She has played the violin since age 2 1/2, studied comparative government and earned her wings jumping out of airplanes.

Now, 21-year-old Melissa Sturm, a Taft High School graduate and San Fernando Valley native, can add Rhodes scholar to her eclectic--and distinguished--list of accomplishments.

The Rhodes scholarship was created in 1902 by the estate of British financier-colonialist Cecil J. Rhodes and is one of the oldest international awards available to American scholars.

A senior at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Sturm was one of 32 American students this year--and 2,886 since the scholarship’s inception--to receive the prestigious award, which grants two or three years of study at Oxford University in England.

This year’s candidates were selected from 935 applicants representing 323 colleges and universities around the country. Two other California women also won, Yale University senior Jennie S. Han of Mission Viejo and Elisha B. Peterson of Oakhurst, who attends Harvey Mudd College in Claremont.

Han said she plans to study Muslim states of the former Soviet Union. It is a topic she became interested in while in high school.

“I started studying the region in high school, right after the fall of the Soviet Union,” she said. “You hear about the different cultures there, and that spurred me to do reading on my own.”

Sturm is one of three West Point classmates among this year’s Rhodes scholars. The others are Craig Mullaney of North Kingstown, R.I., and Elizabeth Young of Branford, Conn.

Art and Linda Sturm of Chatsworth say their daughter has been an overachiever since she began learning how to play a pint-sized violin using the Suzuki method.

Growing up in the Valley, Sturm attended Portola Middle School, North Hollywood High School and, for her final two years, Taft High.

In 1996, Sturm was granted a commission to West Point where she has since founded a string quartet, joined the school’s judo team and become a paratrooper.

“She always did what really interested her whether it was hard or not,” said Linda Sturm. “She always did what she would learn more from and never took the easy route.”

Melissa Sturm plans to spend two years completing her master’s in Oriental Studies of the Modern Middle East, according to her mother. Beyond that she has a five-year commitment to the U.S. Army, her family said.