The University of Louisville is the home to the state's latest Rhodes Scholar.
Just 32 students nationwide are chosen for academia's most coveted honor each year.
The latest recipient is a young woman from eastern Kentucky who says she nearly didn't make it to college at all.
"Growing up in Rush grounded me in a lot of ways," said Monica Marks, Rhodes Scholar.
23-year-old Marks calls Rush, Kentucky, population 1000, home.
But right now, she calls Istanbul, Turkey home where she's studying on a Fulbright Scholarship.
And soon she'll call Oxford University in England home as a Rhodes Scholar. But she didn't always know that was possible.
"The conversation was never about where you were going to college, as it was with many of my peers. It was if college was even a possibility," said Marks.
“The hills of eastern Kentucky are beautiful, but they often have a way of trapping their residents. And getting beyond that was never an assumption."
Her hometown, in Carter County, had no public library. Her parents never graduated high school and her father worked as a janitor and she was raised a Jehovah’s Witness.
"Really whenever you want to go to college, especially if you want to pursue a long educational track, that's highly discouraged and you'll find yourself shunned by many members of that community if you pursue that course, as I did," she said.
But she had a passion for learning, you can see it in her eyes when she describes her current research track in Turkey.
At 18, she chose to attend the University of Louisville because she simply couldn't afford to go to any of the other schools she was accepted to but she says it may have been the best decision of her life.
“It's a great message to young people across this state," said UofL President Dr. James Ramsey, “Don't let anybody tell you that you can't do it, you can do it.”
And Monica is proof.
Monica will begin her master's program at Oxford in September of next year. She plans to continue her studies of Islamic society and law.
