Two from state among 32 Rhodes scholars
CHICAGO - A translator for Guantánamo Bay detainees, a boxer from the Bronx and an ultimate Frisbee player were among 32 Americans selected as Rhodes scholars for 2008, the scholarship trust announced Sunday.
Two college seniors from Washington are among this year’s winners.
Jason G. Crabtree, of Kingston, is a civil-engineering major at the United States Military Academy, and Aaron Polhamus, of Bellingham, is a public-policy major at Stanford University who spent his first two years of college at Western Washington University.
Crabtree, who has helped design NASA parachute systems, plans to study information engineering.
Polhamus, who worked on U.S.-China economic relations as an intern with the Treasury Department, plans to pursue a degree in development studies.
Winners were chosen from among 764 applicants.
The scholarships, the oldest international study award available to American students, provide two or three years of study at Oxford University in England. Winners will begin their studies next October.
Many of the winners stand out, not only for their academic prowess, but also for their achievements outside academia - in sports, in the military or as volunteers.
Isra Bhatty, 23, a University of Chicago graduate and now a law student at Yale University, is a sometime poet and hip-hop artist. She also serves as an English-Urdu translator for detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; she does that work via telephone.
Winner Reed Doucette is a senior at the University of Southern California and was on the basketball team that made it to the NCAA’s Sweet Sixteen last season. Another recipient, New York native Adam Levine, is an accomplished light-heavyweight boxer.
Rhodes scholarships were created in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes. The value of the scholarship varies depending on the field of study. The total value averages about $45,000 per year.