Fang Cao, a senior neurobiology and physiology and computer science major, is the only recent Rhodes scholar from this university.
Fang Cao, a 2015 alumnus, is no stranger to recognition. Last year, the computer science and physiology and neurobiology major was this university’s first Truman’s Scholar as well as the second Rhodes Scholar in the school’s history.
Now, the Phi Kappa Phi honor society awarded Cao a Marcus L. Urann Fellowship, which grants $15,000 each to a few select students across the country.
Cao said his current situation is a result of many years of work, but his early life was all about adapting to transitions and taking advance of circumstances.
“I was born in China, immigrated to England before I was eight,” said Cao, who cited various financial difficulties and cultural shifts, including learning a new language and making friends, as hardships he had to overcome. “It was a time of great transitions and new cultures. It helped me learn how to adapt to new environments at a young age.”
While attending this university from 2011 to 2015, Cao similarly helped others adapt when he started and managed two separate tutoring programs for underprivileged students at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville. Cao said he worked with most of the students at the school, and helped with AP biology and calculus.
“I spent a lot of time with them, and it was one of my most fulfilling experiences,” Cao said. “It was great to help students who had less than me.”
Cao said his devotion to the service of others is an ideology that has driven his life, and one he hopes to continue. He added that he ultimately wants to provide health care opportunities — including affordable health care services, procedures and surgeries to those who are less fortunate.
University officials immediately recognized Cao’s dedication to service when he first stepped foot on the campus. Robert Infantino — an associate dean for undergraduate education who worked with Cao on various scholarship applications junior and senior year — said Cao had “a deep core belief of inclusion and service to other people, formed by his own past experiences.”
Infantino said Cao, a member of the first class of the Integrated Life Sciences Honors Program in 2011, worked with various directors to integrate service as a pillar of the program’s curriculum.
“He was unusually focused and unusually talented,” Infantino said. “Fang has a very forward sense of what he wants to do.”
To nurture his vision of compassion toward others, Cao was accepted to some of the nation’s most prestigious medical schools. However, he deferred his medical school studies and the Phi Kappa Phi fellowship until 2017 to pursue a master’s degree in medical anthropology with his Rhodes Scholarship at the University of Oxford, where he will be studying in the fall.
The selective Phi Kappa Phi fellowship, which Cao was awarded on June 11, is given to 57 members going into professional or graduate studies, Phi Kappa Phi’s programs coordinator Kelli Partin said.
“Each chapter may submit one nominee to the national competition, and these materials are evaluated by a five-person selection committee of faculty members and myself as the staff liaison,” Partin said.
Only the top six fellowship recipients got $15,000 — the rest were awarded $5,000 grants. Phi Kappa Phi accepts the top 10 percent of seniors and graduate students and 7.5 percent of second-semester juniors for admission across all chapters.
Cao, who became a member of the honor society his junior year, said the fraternity grabbed his attention for its “good community,” and maintained that this recent fellowship has brought him closer to the society.
Partin said Cao was exactly the kind of student the honor society was looking for.
“Extraordinary applicant, extraordinary individual,” Partin said. “Fang Cao is as close as I’ve seen to a completely worthy candidate of the PKP fellowship.”
