Eckerd College student Ashley Rhodes-Courter is one of 20 undergraduate students to be named to USA TODAY's 2007 All-USA College Academic First Team. Ashley is one of only two students from a Florida college or university.

The All-USA College Academic Team was selected from almost 600 students nominated by their schools. Recipients receive trophies and $2,500 awards as representatives of all outstanding undergraduates.

Born in North Carolina in 1985, Ashley entered foster care in 1989. Over the next nine years, she lived in fourteen placements before being adopted at age 12 by Phil and Gay Courter of Crystal River, Florida.

"The focus is not just me winning this award," says Ashley. "It's bringing attention to the plight of 500,000 youth who don't have permanent families. Less than two percent of children who age out of foster care receive a bachelor's degree; fifty percent or less graduate high school. I represent the young people in America who are being overlooked. Because of that, they're losing faith, but when someone like me has this opportunity, it gives them hope."

At 21 years old, Ashley is a third-year student with senior status and a 3.84 GPA. She is double majoring in communications and theater and double minoring in political science and psychology. Her career interests include public policy, politics and public relations.

Ashley is the recipient of Eckerd's Trustee Scholarship, the Florida Bright Futures Medallion Scholarship, the Florida Resident Access Grant and several other national and local scholarships. At Eckerd, Ashley serves as a residential advisor, student public relations spokesperson and speech coach. She spent her January 2006 winter term in South Africa working with a children's literacy project.

Nominated by Florida Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite in 2004, Ashley and her family were named Angels in Adoption by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. That same year, she was named the 2004 Youth Advocate of the Year for the North American Council on Adoption and won the Child Welfare League of America Kids to Kids National Service Grand Prize. She has served on the professional staff at the Kinship Center's adoption camp in Pacific Grove, California for three summer sessions.

Ashley has been featured on Montel Williams and other national and local television shows. She has given over 25 speeches, including more than 15 keynotes, telling her story with passion, sharing hope with other foster children and strongly encouraging adoption and permanency.

Says Ashley's mother, Gay Courter, "Her accomplishment is even greater when you realize that she moved fourteen times in foster care, was never read to as a young child, and changed schools nine times before she came to us. She had every strike against her but that only made her more determined - or maybe it was the fiery spirit beneath her red hair."

The New York Times Magazine dated June 1, 2003 published Ashley's grand prize winning essay (out of 3000 high school entries) about her adoption day. Her essay will be expanded into a memoir, Three Little Words, that will be published by Simon & Schuster in early 2008.

This past January, Ashley was selected as one of twelve recipients of the 2007 BRICK Awards given by the social change organization Do Something. Since 1996, the BRICK Awards have honored young people making our world a better place.