Inspired by Detroit's resilience, U-M student earns prestigious Rhodes Scholarship
University of Michigan student Yumna Dagher has been named a 2025 Rhodes Scholar, one of 32 Americans chosen to win scholarships to Oxford University.
A recent graduate with double majors in English and the Environment, she became the 33rd U-M Rhodes Scholar since the awards were established in 1902.
"I have always wanted to pursue graduate studies, but found myself at a juncture-the possibility of a fully funded graduate education seemed far away," Dagher said. "Now, heading to Oxford, I hope to gain the theoretical grounding and interdisciplinary training necessary to build projects that honor the kinds of relational practices I witnessed on campus and within Detroit environmental spaces, where stewardship becomes a vessel for building collective climate futures."
The Rhodes Scholarship is a prestigious award that provides complete financial support for outstanding students from around the world to study at the University of Oxford. Its purpose is to develop leaders who are committed to public service and international understanding, promoting peace through a diverse, global community of scholars.
The 32 Rhodes Scholars selected this year will begin their graduate studies in October 2026. They will join dozens of international Rhodes Scholars from around the world. Many of those international scholars also studied at U.S. colleges and universities but, as non-U.S. citizens, applied through their home countries.
Dagher will pursue graduate degrees in both nature, society and environmental governance and in visual, material and museum anthropology.
"I want to work at the intersection of culture, cooperative economics and sustainable food systems," she said. "And alongside work in these fields, develop art and writing practice as a printmaker, cartoonist and poet."
At U-M, Dagher completed her work, establishing a record combining academic achievement with leadership in sustainability and the arts. Her academic efforts resulted in a senior honors thesis in creative writing, which received campus awards. She continues her work in the arts by collaborating with an arts alliance to establish a neighborhood arts hub that connects creative programming directly to the community.
In her current role as a Dean's Fellow in the LSA dean's office, Dagher focuses on implementing college-wide sustainability initiatives and supports projects that enrich undergraduate education. She continues her work in the arts by collaborating with a creative alliance to establish a neighborhood cultural hub that connects creative programming directly to the community.
Campus farming, local collaboration
In 2024, Dagher began work at U-M's Campus Farm. She collaborated with student-farmers on fieldwork and taught in the refugee garden. The garden, co-administered with resettlement agency Jewish Family Services, gave gardeners an opportunity to grow culturally familiar crops and maintain food traditions after resettlement. This work grounded her understanding of land as the basis for community building.
With fellow interns, Dagher supported the 2024 growing season, growing thousands of pounds of organically grown produce for the U-M dining halls and community members. She also supported the Mobile Farm Stand, a student-led, pop-up market that brings locally grown, sustainable produce directly to campus.
Her commitment deepened during a visit to Oakland Avenue Urban Farm in Detroit, a Black-led collective. There, Dagher learned from the farm's leader that agriculture is not just about growing food, but about creating a viable future, reinforcing her belief in environmental stewardship as a means of community resilience.
Once returning to campus, Dagher went back to a previous role, leading U-M's Sustainable Food Program. With her team, they secured and repurposed an unused campus café, transforming it into a climate resilience programming space, hosting workshops and meals through the Rooting for Change Cafe series and promoting a student-led transition for campus sustainability.
"At the center of UMSFP was our people," she said. "We understood the work as the relationships we built-connections made stronger through collaboration. I hope to bring this ethic to the Rhodes community, contributing with the deep grounding I've gained in Detroit where the work is survival.
"In turn, I want to learn from peers whose solutions emerge from different geographies: organizers confronting resource extraction, scholars exploring cross-disciplinary governance and leaders stewarding with care. Together, we can braid these perspectives-my grounding in land-based organizing and their diverse cultural and political insights-to create cross-border models of resilience."
