<p>This was in a Pgh paper this a.m. :) </p>
<p>So happens one of the local Rhodes Scholars is a USNA Mid! This is even more impressive than the Midus Muffler Bowl bid, imo!;) Pretty cool, indeed!:cool:</p>
<p>Anyone know if Mr. Genis is the lone Rhodes ranger @ USNA this season?:confused:</p>
<p>Pitt student, 2 from area win Rhodes scholarships
Monday, November 20, 2006</p>
<p>Two college seniors from Western Pennsylvania and a University of Pittsburgh student from Georgia were among 32 Americans named 2007 Rhodes scholars, a prestigious distinction that offers two years of study at University of Oxford in England.</p>
<p>The local scholars represent disparate academic fields.</p>
<p>Daniel Armanios, a 22-year-old Pitt honors student from Marietta, Ga., is an award-winning poet, an avid soccer player and a helicopter design engineer who founded a campus organization to expand dialogue about the Arab-Israeli conflict using role reversal. A fifth-year student living in North Oakland, he majors in mechanical engineering and political science and minors in economics. He plans to study dry lands science and management at Oxford.</p>
<p>Whitney Haring-Smith, 21, of Washington, Pa., has put his political science major at Yale University to the test, negotiating for weapons and ammunition collection in Afghanistan and assisting Sri Lankan refugees for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He has also worked in national, state and local Democratic politics, including a stint as a spokesman for the mayor of New Haven, Conn. He plans to work toward a doctorate in politics at Oxford, where in 1907 his great-grandfather, Clarence Haring, was a Rhodes scholar in Latin American studies.</p>
<p>Sean A. Genis of Sharon, Mercer County, is a physics major and a regimental commander responsible for 2,300 midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. The 21-year-old rides for the academy's cycling team and sings in the glee club, following a stellar run starring in musicals and chorale performances at Sharon High School. He won a Truman scholarship for his work researching techniques for acoustic land mine detection. He minors in Spanish, but plans to focus on philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford.</p>
<p>Mr. Armanios told his father of the award and then called his advisers, G. Alec Stewart, of Pitt's Honors College, and Amy Eckhardt, director of National Scholarship and International Programs, who had encouraged him to apply.</p>
<p>The child of Egyptian Coptic Christian immigrants who teach engineering at Georgia Tech, Mr. Armanios aspired to become a scientist from a young age. A high school history teacher set his sights much higher than he had hoped one day when she was disappointed about a research paper: "She told me, 'You don't even know how much potential you have.' "</p>
<p>Books on globalization convinced him it was important for scientists to grasp the policies that direct scientific research and technology. He wants to work on sustainable development through science and technology "to alleviate social and economic inequality."</p>
<p>He has acclimated to the Pittsburgh winters and feels he has been adopted by the city. He loves the Steelers, "unless they're playing the Falcons," he said.</p>
<p>Mr. Haring-Smith grew up outside of Western Pennsylvania, but his father's family is from Pittsburgh and he has spent time in the area since his mother, Tori Haring-Smith, became president of Washington and Jefferson College.</p>
<p>His father said after Mr. Haring-Smith's first 11 years in Providence, R.I., his son's world view was very limited.</p>
<p>"His aspirations were to get to Fenway to watch the Red Sox. That was about it. We wanted to broaden his horizons," he said.</p>
<p>The family relocated to Cairo for a few years and Mr. Haring-Smith took an interest in politics. He later got involved in theater and model United Nations.</p>
<p>Last summer, the Yale student said he teamed up with a translator to negotiate weapons and ammunition recovery "from illegally armed groups" in Afghanistan through the U.N. development program.</p>
<p>He spent time in Sri Lanka in 2004, trying to assess where internally displaced persons in refugee camps wanted to resettle.</p>
<p>He said he wants to study security at Oxford because "it is the gate key to everything else. You cannot have a reasonable dialogue about economic development if you can't take out the trash every week. You can't have a reasonable dialogue about poverty alleviation if people are afraid to open up new business."</p>
<p>**Mr. Genis lived in five other states before his family settled in Sharon, where he ran track, played soccer and was a drum major, a pianist, an Eagle Scout and class valedictorian.</p>
<p>His high school chorale director, Victor Ellenberger, recalls him as "probably the most self-motivated student I ever had in 28 years of teaching."</p>
<p>His parents were "on cloud nine" when they heard he'd won the Rhodes scholarship.:eek:</p>
<p>"This is a huge honor. The only thing bigger than this would be the Nobel Prize," said his mother, Roxana, a pottery artist who used to work for General Electric.</p>
<p>At the academy, he studied with one of two national experts developing land mine detection methods that involve blasting sound into soil.</p>
<p>He said that he wants to build on his training in science and technology and spend his time at Oxford studying "the human side of the land mine issue and global security," combining social science and hard science. He also hopes to keep up his singing, and will return to the Navy after his Oxford studies. **</p>