Four Golden Bears Earn Postgraduate Scholarships
Four Cal student-athletes have been awarded postgraduate scholarships to help in pursuing higher degrees.
Roshan Toopal (men's gymnastics) and Jack Robertson (men's rowing) have received an Oscar Geballe Postgraduate Scholarship, given annually to chosen Cal student-athletes for their combination of scholarship and athletic competition. The award comes with a $10,000 stipend for postgraduate studies.
Jamie Stankiewiz (field hockey) and George Finlayson (men's rowing) have each won a Pac-12 postgraduate scholarship, created to honor outstanding scholar-athletes intending to pursue graduate studies. It includes a $9,000 stipend.
The Oscar Geballe Award was created through the generosity of Dr. Theodore Geballe to honor his father, Oscar Geballe. It recognizes Oscar Geballe's devotion to Cal and his strong belief in the value of combining scholarship and intercollegiate athletic competition. There have now been 100 Geballe Award winners since 1981.
Toopal, from Scottsdale, Arizona, was a member of the Golden Bears' men's gymnastics team from 2016-19 and earned his degree in bioengineering. As a Cal student, he interned at Elemeno Health, a biotech startup, and at the Taylor Corporation, a nonprofit company that conducts orthopedic biomechanics research. On campus, he also worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Berkeley Biomechanics Lab, while he added another internship with Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals after graduation. Toopal earned the team's Golden Bear Award for having the highest grade-point average on the men's gymnastics team. He is pursuing his master's degree in mechanical engineering at Stanford.
Robertson is completing his senior season as a member of Cal's men's crew in 2021. Originally from Melbourne, Australia, he is graduating this spring with a degree in anthropology and a journalism minor. He was the 2020 recipient of both the Golden Bear Award and Jim Lemmon Award for having the highest GPA among Cal men's rowers. Robertson has been named to the Australian Senior National Team as a reserve that will compete at the Tokyo Olympics. Robertson has been accepted for graduate study at the University of Oxford, where he will pursue his master's degree in sociology.
Stankiewiz played for the Bears from 2013-16 and earned several honors during her career, including selection to the NFHCA National Academic Squad and the Cal Alumni Student Association's Leadership Award. She also became active on campus as a member of the Space Technology and Rocketry Club and the 3D Modeling Club, and she taught a DeCal class on 3D Bioprinting. As a senior, she conducted protein-folding research for the Marqusee Lab, and she graduated with dual degrees in molecular & cell biology and statistics. Stankiewiz later worked as a research associate at the NASA Ames Research Center and as an associate scientist in the automated strain engineering and fermentation departments at Amyris. She will be pursuing her master's degree in environmental engineering at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Finlayson hails from Sydney, Australia, and rowed on Cal's varsity eight during each the past four seasons, earning a runner-up finish at the Pac-12 Championships his freshman year and a national title in the second varsity eight as a sophomore. He also competed with the Australian under-23 team during the summer of 2019. A member of the Pac-12 and IRA All-Academic teams, Finlayson will graduate from Cal with a history major and creative writing minor. He has been accepted to Cambridge University to pursue a master of philosophy in management.