A Tucson native and Salpointe graduate is one of 32 people nationwide to win a Rhodes Scholarship for next year, a prestigious award that will send her to study at England's Oxford University.
Noelle Lopez, now a senior at Santa Clara University in California, received the news Sunday while gathered in a conference room with other Rhodes candidates in Colorado Springs, Colo.
When the winners' names were announced, hers was the second read.
"I was kind of in shock," she said later in the day.
Lopez, 20, was a member of the National Honor Society at Tucson's Salpointe Catholic High School and volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and the Casa Maria soup kitchen.
She also was a standout member of the cross-country and track teams, and she set school records for distance running. Lopez was named Girls Cross Country Runner of the Year by the Arizona Daily Star in 2004.
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At Oxford, Lopez will pursue graduate studies in philosophy, focusing on virtue ethics.
"Virtue ethics is basically the question of 'what is the good life, and how can we be good people?' " she said.
She discovered her enthusiasm for philosophy in her literature courses with teacher Kerry Demers at Salpointe, she said.
But Lopez was reluctant to declare a philosophy major in college because she thought it might be "impractical," and she cycled through majors in psychology and political science.
"I was afraid I wouldn't be able to help address any real problems in the world," she said. But Lopez eventually decided that by teaching philosophy, she could do just that.
"I thought about all of the amazing teachers that I've had and how they've influenced me, . . . and I realized that education is very powerful in actually effecting change in the world," she said.
This year's 32 Rhodes Scholars were picked from 769 applicants endorsed by 207 colleges and universities nationwide.
The scholarships, the oldest of the international study awards available to American students, provide two or three years of study. The students will enter Oxford next October.
Lopez, who has never been to England, said that she expects her stay to be a great opportunity, if a bit rainy.
"I'm really excited. It'll be a challenge — I'm sure," she said.
Among the other Rhodes winners is a college football star, Florida State University safety Myron Rolle, who had to miss part of Saturday's game against Maryland because he was being interviewed for the scholarship. Rolle is a pre-med student and hopes to become a neurosurgeon.
Another winner is Abdulrahman M. El-Sayed of Ann Arbor, Mich., a 2007 University of Michigan graduate now studying in the university's joint medical-Ph.D. program in medicine and public health.
David L.V. Bauer, a student at the City College of New York, is looking forward to conducting research at Oxford to develop faster, cheaper ways of sequencing genomes so the technology can become available to everyone. Such an advance could allow more people to take preventive measures against ailments to which they are particularly susceptible.
Rhodes winner Malorie Snider, a senior at Harvard, said she plans to study medical anthropology at Oxford, delving into an interest that has been growing during her undergraduate studies.
Lopez is apparently the first Rhodes Scholar from Tucson in six years. According to the Star's archives, Keith Benedict was chosen as a Rhodes Scholar in late 2002. A graduate of Canyon del Oro High School who went on to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, Benedict planned to study postwar development.
