Fourth-year in biology receives first Jack Kent Cooke scholarship

Fourth-year student Mark Krakauer is one of the first recipients of a new scholarship to be awarded by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.

The scholarship, said to be the most generous graduate scholarship in the nation, will pay up to $300,000 for six years of graduate study. Krakauer, who is concentrating in biology, plans to use the scholarship to attend the University of Oxford for an M. Phil. in development studies, followed by medical school.

Last summer, Krakauer was an intern at UNAIDS in Switzerland, where he was introduced to the problems of global health policy. AIDS, he wrote in his scholarship application, is a “disease of inequality ... it disproportionately attacks the poor, uneducated and powerless.” Krakauerís goal is to practice medicine in low-income urban areas in the United States and developing countries, and eventually become a health policy planner.

The estate of Jack Cooke, who died in 1997, helped to establish the foundation in 2000. Cooke, a businessman and philanthropist, owned the Washington Redskins and the Chrysler Building in New York City. Fifty scholarships were awarded to applicants from Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.