UNM student Shaina Saint-Lot is one of fewer than 100 students worldwide who will get to pursue a graduate degree from a top-ranked European university, entirely for free.
Saint-Lot, a fourth-year economics and international studies double major in the Honors College and a McNair Scholar, is one of 39 American students and 50 more students worldwide who received the Gates Cambridge Scholarship this year. She is also the first awardee from UNM.
The Gates Cambridge Scholarship finances room, board and tuition for a full-time student pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
The scholarship is awarded to students based on intellectual ability, leadership potential, commitment to improving the lives of others, and how well the student’s educational needs fit the programs offered at the University of Cambridge.
Saint-Lot said she intends to pursue a degree in development studies, which will allow her to work in fields such as economic and program development.
“One of the main problems with developing countries is that they don’t have strong governments or strong institutions. I want to study institutions and see how they influence development,” she said.
Saint-Lot also expressed interest in working with countries’ legal systems to improve the lives of others.
“Usually in underdeveloped countries there is no sense of property rights. It seems like it’s not a big deal but actually it’s a pretty big deal,” she said. “You are not going to have development if you don’t have property rights or clear laws.”
Born in Haiti, Saint-Lot and her family moved unexpectedly to New Mexico shortly after the removal of the Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in 2004.
“We came to visit an uncle, and that’s when they were kicking out the president in Haiti and they closed the airports, so we couldn’t go back,” she said.
She said they were gone long enough to miss school, prompting her mother to register her and her siblings for school in the U.S.
“Just from growing up in Haiti, I always knew that I wanted to have a job that somehow helped people have a better quality of life, a better standard of life,” Saint-Lot said.
UNM offers many international educational opportunities, which Saint-Lot has taken advantage of. She spent a month in Costa Rica during the summer of 2010 and two months in Nicaragua during the summer of 2011 as an international student volunteer, two weeks in China for an honors class during January of 2011, and studied abroad in Spain during her junior year.
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“(These trips) showed me that I was committed to what I was doing,” Saint-Lot said. “This is something I have wanted to do since I was a little girl.”
Saint-Lot has also participated in many student clubs and organizations on campus. She played rugby on campus for two years, was a member of Amnesty International, was the vice president of the Latin America Sustainability Association and volunteers for Big Brothers Big Sisters.
