The University Record, January 7, 1997
Marshall Scholar Stoll will study at Oxford 
A U-M senior from White Lake has been awarded a Marshall Scholarship for two years of study at a British university.
Heather Stoll has chosen to attend Oxford University where she will pursue a master’s degree in politics. A double major in political science and economics at U-M, Stoll will graduate in May, three years after she enrolled. She entered the University with 45 Advanced Placement Test credits.
Named a Harry S. Truman Scholar last year on the basis of her outstanding leadership potential in government and public service, Stoll served as director of the University’s Model United Nations and is current director of the Mid-American Global Education Council, a program which each year hosts three Model United Nations conferences for high school students.
“I’m grateful for having been able to participate in one of these conferences in high school, and this is one way to show my gratitude for the opportunity,” said Stoll of her work, which involves planning and organizing the programs, selection and management of staff, and recruitment and production of conference publications. Walled Lake Central High School’s global education program “shaped where I am today, and I am eternally grateful.”
She hopes to pursue a career in university teaching and research and “in the long run, I aspire to work with the State Department and the U.S. ambassadorial mission to the United Nations in formulating policy. I also plan to continue my work in global education. I believe that scholarly programs for children lay the foundation for future, more empathetic intellectual enterprises.”
Stoll says she has “a high tolerance for lack of free time.” Outside of the classroom, she is an avid skier, has studied classical piano for 16 years, likes to read science fiction and fantasy, and has published her poetry.
For the last year, she has worked 25-30 hours a week as a research and administrative assistant at Failure Analysis Associates in Birmingham where she manages research-based contract work for the engineering firm. She is still deciding whether she will once again serve as a volunteer forensics coach at Walled Lake Central, where her sister is a senior and her brother a junior. In her first year at U-M, she worked as a student assistant in the University’s Central Dining Services office; in high school she was a page at the Westacres Branch Community Library in West Bloomfield.
Described as “one of the most impressive candidates that the University has endorsed for a Marshall Scholarship during the past few years,” Stoll began taking upper level courses in political science in her first year at U-M, according to J. Bernard Machen, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. The Honors Program in political science, for which she’s writing a thesis on the role of class and caste in modern India, typically admits only the 15 best students from its many hundreds of concentrators, said Machen.
One scholarship nominator said Stoll is “one of the best students I’ve encountered in my 25 years of teaching at U-M,” while another described her as the most talented and promising of the several hundred students whom he has taught. Said another professor: “Every once in a while a professor gets lucky and encounters students who are truly unusual: original, gifted with searching minds, and committed to the pursuit of knowledge that spans cultural divides. Heather Stoll is one of those students.” Stoll is “dauntingly smart,” he said, but not only “book smart. She also has the good judgment and broad ranging cultural interests to let her keep things in a balanced perspective.”
The Marshall Scholarships are financed by the British government and cover tuition, books, travel and living expenses in the United Kingdom. The scholarships were established in 1953 as a national gesture of thanks to the people of the United States for assistance received after World War II under the Marshall Plan. This year 40 American students were selected, representing 26 colleges and universities.
