Fort Collins native, Fossil Ridge High graduate Cole Mason named a 2024 Rhodes Scholar

Fort Collins native and Fossil Ridge High School graduate Cole Mason has been selected as a Rhodes Scholar, allowing him to study full time at the University of Oxford in England while he pursues a pair of master’s degrees.

Mason, 22, is one of 32 students in the U.S. this year selected to receive one of the prestigious scholarships, which cover the full cost of attendance — including visa, travel and living expenses through a monthly stipend for two years — at Oxford. The scholarship program was established in 1902 through the will of Cecil Rhodes “to identify young leaders from around the world, who, through the pursuit of education together at Oxford, would forge bonds of mutual understanding and fellowship for the betterment of mankind,” according to the Rhodes Trust website.

Previous recipients have included former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron “Whizzer” White, a star football player from Wellington; former U.S. President Bill Clinton; former NBA great and U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley; U.S. Sen. Cory Booker; and Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.

“It feels very surreal,” Mason said Tuesday.

Students are nominated by their colleges or universities and chosen through a selection process that includes interviews with a selection committee. Two recipients are chosen from each of 16 geographical districts in the U.S., based either on their hometowns or the location of their college or university. Nine of the 2024 Rhodes Scholars are from Harvard University. Six others also attend Ivy League schools and four are from U.S. military service academies. Mason is one of two from Colorado this year. The other is Victoria Harwell, a student from Denver attending Washington University in St. Louis.

Mason is completing a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and political science with a certificate in French next month at Williams College, a liberal-arts school of 2,200 students in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He hopes to complete a one-year Master of Science degree program in nature, society and environmental governance in his first year at Oxford, and a second master’s degree in public policy in his second year “where I’m hoping to apply what I learned in that first year to practical policy implications and things like that,” he said.

Cole Mason, the son of Kathy and Steve Mason, was born at Poudre Valley Hospital, raised in Fort Collins and speaks proudly of the education he received from his neighborhood schools in Poudre School District: Werner Elementary, Preston Middle School and Fossil Ridge.

“I’m still in touch with some of my educators, from kindergarten through high school, there,” he said from Florida, where he is participating in a pre-holiday training camp with the Williams College swim team before returning home to Colorado. He’s one of the team’s two captains.

Cole Mason swam on three state championship teams at Fossil Ridge, participated in classical choirs all four years and also was in a contemporary a cappella group, the environmental club and multiple honor societies. He also swam competitively for the Fort Collins Area Swim Team.

He chose Williams College, he said, for its academic and swimming programs.

“I knew I wanted to swim in college, but I’ve always been someone who put the student in student-athlete first,” he said. “So, Division III was what I wanted, so I could pursue academics and also swim at a high level. I wanted to study liberal arts, because I have a lot of general interests, and for me, having a well-rounded academic base helps me think of things in a lot of different ways.”

Mason filled out an application for the Rhodes Scholar program over the summer, he said, and learned in August that he had been nominated by Williams College. He received an email in late October, two weeks before the in-person interviews with a selection committee for his district, that he was a finalist. Winners were announced last month.

Mason and the other 2024 Rhodes Scholars from the U.S. will travel to Oxford in early October to begin the first of three eight-week terms that make up the “main teaching periods” of the school’s academic year, according to the university’s website.

This year’s class brings the total of Rhodes Scholarships won by U.S. students to 3,642, representing 327 colleges and universities, Forbes reported in a story about this year’s recipients.

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins native, Fossil Ridge High graduate named a Rhodes Scholar