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We Are Johnnies Feature
If Jervon Sands has any advice for current students looking to follow in his footsteps, it would be to take advantage of all the opportunities to explore their interests and try new things that are presented to them at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University.
The 2023 graduate - who last fall became just the second SJU graduate and the fourth from the CSB and SJU community to be selected as a Rhodes Scholar - did just that during his time in Collegeville.
The applied physics major from Nassau in The Bahamas served as an international student mentor in the Multicultural Center, worked as a Help Desk assistant with IT services, explored his interest in poetry and studied abroad in London, where he worked for a climate change charity and attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties, also known COP 26, in Scotland.
The 2021 Jackson Fellow and 2022 Brandl Scholar was also among a group of CSB and SJU students who traveled to COP 27 in Egypt.
“Stepping outside your comfort zone is definitely encouraged here at Saint John’s,” said Sands, who wants to devote his career to helping solve climate change. “There are so many opportunities for you to do that and so many mentors and people on campus that are encouraging you to do that.
“They’re encouraging you to find yourself through these new experiences you’re going to engage in.”
Sands, who graduated summa cum laude, will study for the Master of Sciences (MSc) in Environmental Change and Management, and MSc in Sustainability, Enterprise and the Environment beginning this October at Oxford.
“I definitely think that Saint John’s being a smaller community was beneficial when it came to my being able to get connected and find myself here,” said Sands, who is currently in Puerto Rico serving in the Benedictine Volunteer Corps. “I don’t think that going to a much larger university, I would have had the same sort of experience of getting to grow as much as I did here.”
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Our alumni directory, JohnniesConnect, is currently offline for an overhaul as we have switched to a new database. In the meantime, we recommend alumni utilize LinkedIn to connect with fellow alumni. To do so, visit Saint John’s University or College of Saint Benedict LinkedIn pages. Click on the Alumni tab to find a searchable database of thousands of fellow SJU and CSB alums on LinkedIn. You can search by keyword, attendance year, where they live, where they work, what they do and more.
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