2 Naval Academy Midshipman Awarded Knight-Hennessy Scholarships

ANNAPOLIS, MD — Naval Academy Midshipman 1st Class William Jarrett, 22, of Gales Ferry, Connecticut, and Midshipman 1st Class Chase Lee, 22, of Las Vegas, Nevada, were recently named Knight-Hennessy Scholars.

The Knight-Hennessy Scholars program provides full funding for students to pursue a graduate degree at Stanford University.

Jarrett and Lee are two of 70 scholars selected to the program’s fifth cohort of students. More than 6,500 candidates competed for one of the 70 scholarships awarded.

Jarrett is an honors robotics and control engineering major and a Spanish minor. He is one of 13 Trident Scholars in the Class of 2022, conducting research in electro-optics and optical communication systems.

Jarrett intends to pursue a master’s degree in electrical engineering. Following his time as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, Jarrett will serve as a submarine officer. His long-term career goals include applying to the astronaut program after gaining operational experience aboard the Navy’s nuclear submarines.

Outside the classroom, Jarrett is a member of the Navy Men’s Lightweight Crew team, competing in and winning the lightweight straight four at the 2021 IRA National Championships. In 2021, Jarrett had the opportunity to live abroad in Costa Rica as a culmination of his Spanish studies.

Lee is a cyber operations major at the Naval Academy, and completed the National Security Agency’s Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations program. He is a Harry S. Truman Scholar and the winner of the MIT Policy Hackathon 2021 Internet and Cybersecurity Challenge.

His research interests include the gaps in knowledge pertaining to cybersecurity education and training in elementary schools and the Department of Defense, respectively. His capstone research focused on building a platform template for applying Ethereum blockchain technology and homomorphic encryption to electronic voting.

As a midshipman, Lee served as the Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference technology director, a Company Platoon Commander, the Midshipman Action Group’s chief of staff, and president of Naval Academy’s Chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He also interned with the Department of Defense and Innoplex, LLC.

Lee intends to pursue a master’s degree in international policy specializing in cyber policy and security. Following his time as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, Lee will serve as a surface warfare officer with the option to later serve as an information professional.

Founded in 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy is a prestigious four-year service academy that prepares midshipmen morally, mentally and physically to be professional officers in the naval service. More than 4,400 men and women representing every state in the U.S. and several foreign countries make up the student body, known as the Brigade of Midshipmen.

U.S. News and World Reports has recognized the Naval Academy as a top-five undergraduate engineering school and a top-25 liberal arts college. Upon graduation, midshipmen earn a Bachelor of Science degree in a choice of 26 different subject majors and go on to serve at least five years of exciting and rewarding service as commissioned officers in the U.S. Navy or U.S. Marine Corps.