Sheree Bennett

Sheree LaToya Bennett has blazed a trail of success from Manchester to Maryland. Sheree, Miss Teen Jamaica 1999-2000, doesn't only grab attention with her good looks, but is sitting pretty among Ivy League peers.

After her outstanding scholastic achievements at Bishop Gibson High School and Manchester High School in Jamaica, Bennett went to study on a full scholarship at Morgan State University (MSU) in Baltimore, Maryland, in August 2000.

She became a very active member of MSU and, among other things, served as a peer counsellor, president of the Foreign Language Honour Society, and executive member of both the French and Spanish Club. She was active in the Political Science Association, Key Club International and Golden Key Honour Society. From her freshman year, she served on the executive board of the International Students' Association.

Sheree was consistently on the dean's list at MSU from 2000. She was one of two women selected to receive the Morgan Outstanding Woman Student award in 2004.

In May 2004, she graduated from (MSU) with a degree in political science (her minors were French and Spanish). She readily admits that her strong Christian beliefs and values helped her to succeed and stay focused. At that time, she had options for fully financed education at the University in Maryland at College Park, Penn State and Yale University.

She felt that getting into graduate school was her greatest achievement thus far.

No walk in the park

She decided to go to Yale University, an Ivy League college in New Haven, Connecticut, and one of the most renowned universities in the world. More than 11,000 students from the U.S. and 108 other countries attend the institution. The charter for the school was granted in 1701 and it was renamed Yale in 1718.

"I am happy with the decision I made to attend Yale," Sheree said recently she readily admits that graduate study is not a walk in the park.

"The academic programme is very challenging, and it was extremely humbling to realise what was required of me. It was a real shock and it took a long time for me to get over the initial experience. Graduate school is tough ... the expectations are very high. But there are vast resources here and I have had to challenge myself," the vivacious young woman said.

Unlike MSU, Yale has a much larger international student body with a large white and Asian community. In fact, international students make up 16 per cent of all the students at the university.

The new environment at Yale and the academic demands on her time have somewhat curtailed the extra-curricular activities that were so much a part of her undergraduate life at MSU. And in any case, graduate work, Sheree says, is very isolating.

"But," she says, "I must be involved in other activities."

She is very involved with her church, the Refuge Temple Church of God, and has been strengthened by her association with other believers there. She has given much of her time to the church.

"My faith in God is just as strong as it has ever been I am in a new environment and facing new challenges," she said. Those beliefs and values helped her to succeed and stay focused at MSU and they are helping her now.

Sheree will complete her Ph.D. in political science in 2010. After that, she expects to return to Jamaica where she feels she can make a significant contribution to the island's development