Rowan Chisholm looks to represent hometown as Lockerbie Scholar

Rowan Chisholm left for his first Syracuse University football game dressed in his best student-section attire. His outfit wasn’t complete without the orange and blue kilt that represents his home country of Scotland.

“It’s a bit of national pride,” Chisholm said, grinning. “The one country that’s more nationally aware of itself than America is the Scots. We’re loud about it.”

The connection between SU, where Chisholm is studying engineering, and Chisholm’s hometown of Lockerbie, Scotland, runs deeper than the colorful kilt. It was above Lockerbie a bomb detonated on Pan Am Flight 103 on Dec. 21, 1988. The attack killed 270 people, including 35 SU students returning from a semester abroad.

Thirty-one years later, Chisholm is one of two recipients of the 2019 Lockerbie Scholars program, which was established to recognize the victims of Pan Am Flight 103. Chisholm and Lockerbie Scholar Brodi Chambers represent the 11 people killed on the ground in the Scottish town and Andrew McClune, who died on campus in 2002.

For Chisholm, being a Lockerbie Scholar isn’t just about commemorating the past. It’s also about representing his community and showing that Lockerbie is more than the site of a tragedy.

“If you were there, you wouldn’t know it had happened,” Chisholm said. “There’s nothing at all in the town that says this big disaster had happened, except for two hidden-away memorials.”

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Many residents, however, still maintain some connection to the tragedy, Chisholm said. Lockerbie is a small town, with a population of about 4,000 people. Chisholm finds a connection to the bombing through the time he spent scouting. Scouts helped coordinate communication in the aftermath of the 1988 tragedy.

Chisholm has been a member of Scouts Scotland for 13 years. While at SU, he plans to continue his involvement in scouting by volunteering with a local Boy Scout troop. He hopes to create a link between the Syracuse and Lockerbie scouting organizations, he said.

Many students in Lockerbie grew up hearing about the Lockerbie Scholars program, Chisholm said. He even knew several former scholars before they attended SU. Joanna Barrie, a 2015-16 scholar, taught him how to sail. Shona Beattie, a 2016-17 scholar, was one of his best friends’ sisters. Chisholm said these prior connections to the program were one of the factors that drove him to apply.

Through the scholarship, the two students from Lockerbie attend SU tuition-free for a year. Lockerbie Scholars take the same classes as other SU students, but the credits they receive don’t transfer to colleges in the United Kingdom.

“(The scholarship) has been a wonderful example of this relationship that has developed between Syracuse and Lockerbie,” said Kelly Rodoski, an SU communications manager and the Lockerbie Scholars liaison. “This has been one of the good things that have come out of such tragedy.”

Lockerbie Scholars represent the 11 people killed on the ground in Lockerbie. Corey Henry | Photo Editor

While not earning credits, Chisholm hopes to expand his horizons while at SU. He’s been taking classes like biological and environmental engineering that he said have allowed him to explore different fields within his area of study. When he returns to Scotland, Chisholm said he plans to use the knowledge gained at SU to pursue a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Highland and Islands at Perth College.

“Right from the very beginning, Rowan has been so excited about the opportunity to be here,” Rodoski said. “He’s really taken this opportunity and run with it.”

Beyond academics, Chisholm said he’s using his time at SU to further his “international experience.” He’s made plenty of new friends since arriving on campus — several enjoy when he wears his favorite kilt –– and has begun exploring the many opportunities available at the university.

Chisholm is also helping plan and promote SU’s Remembrance Week, an annual week-long event commemorating the lives lost during the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. Remembrance Week 2019 takes place nearly 31 years after the tragedy that forged the bond between SU and Chisholm’s quiet hometown in the Scottish countryside.

But the Lockerbie that Chisholm knows isn’t a place marked by disaster. To him, it’s a tight-knit community where everybody knows everybody.