RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Trinida­di­an math­e­mat­ics stu­dent El­liot Ross-Dick has won the 2026 Com­mon­wealth Caribbean Schol­ar­ship, earn­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue post­grad­u­ate stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford in the Unit­ed King­dom.

Ross-Dick was an­nounced as the suc­cess­ful can­di­date by Bar­ba­dos Pres­i­dent Jef­frey Bostic dur­ing an awards cer­e­mo­ny at State House in Bar­ba­dos on Tues­day.

He was se­lect­ed from eight fi­nal­ists rep­re­sent­ing the 17 na­tions of the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean.

An­nounc­ing the win­ner, Bostic said the se­lec­tion process had been high­ly com­pet­i­tive and praised the cal­i­bre of the can­di­dates.

He ex­plained that on­ly one schol­ar­ship was avail­able for study at Ox­ford.

Ross-Dick, a for­mer stu­dent of Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a Bach­e­lor of Arts de­gree in Math­e­mat­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia in the Unit­ed States. He is ex­pect­ed to grad­u­ate in Ju­ly 2027.

Speak­ing af­ter the an­nounce­ment, Ross-Dick ex­pressed grat­i­tude to those who had sup­port­ed him through­out his aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney, par­tic­u­lar­ly his com­mu­ni­ty.

“I am filled with im­mense joy, im­mense grat­i­tude to all the peo­ple that have helped me on my jour­ney and helped me to get there to­day,” he said.

He said the achieve­ment was not his alone, adding that he would not have reached that point with­out the sup­port of oth­ers.

“I wouldn’t have been able to make this jour­ney with­out my com­mu­ni­ty. And so, in this mo­ment right now, I’m just think­ing about them and al­so about the peo­ple who helped me,” he said.

At Ox­ford, Ross-Dick plans to pur­sue post­grad­u­ate stud­ies in ed­u­ca­tion, be­gin­ning with re­search de­sign and meth­ods in ed­u­ca­tion, fol­lowed by in­ter­na­tion­al and com­par­a­tive ed­u­ca­tion.

His in­ter­est in the field is sup­port­ed by his ex­pe­ri­ence in teach­ing and re­search. Be­fore win­ning the schol­ar­ship, he con­duct­ed in­de­pen­dent re­search at Bish­op Anstey Ju­nior School, ex­am­in­ing the cul­tur­al rel­e­vance of math­e­mat­ics ed­u­ca­tion and its in­flu­ence on stu­dent en­gage­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, where he has been study­ing since 2023, Ross-Dick has al­so served as a math­e­mat­ics tu­tor and an In­tro­duc­tion to Python teach­ing as­sis­tant.

In his role as a math­e­mat­ics tu­tor, he con­ducts week­ly ses­sions for stu­dents study­ing mul­ti­vari­able cal­cu­lus and pro­vides ad­di­tion­al as­sis­tance dur­ing ex­am­i­na­tion pe­ri­ods.

He has al­so worked as a stu­dent box of­fice su­per­vi­sor at Penn Live Arts and as as­sis­tant cast di­rec­tor of the uni­ver­si­ty’s Mask and Wig Club.

The Com­mon­wealth Caribbean Schol­ar­ship is part of a pro­gramme aimed at pro­vid­ing tal­ent­ed stu­dents from the re­gion with op­por­tu­ni­ties for ad­vanced study and aca­d­e­m­ic de­vel­op­ment.

The schol­ar­ship is dis­tinct from the Rhodes Schol­ar­ship, which was es­tab­lished through a be­quest by Ce­cil Rhodes in 1902 to fund post­grad­u­ate study at Ox­ford. The first Rhodes Schol­ars took up their stud­ies in 1903.