Local ties for Marshall Scholars

Refugee among the 40 selected

Robert Kubala of Boston College is among the 40 Marshall Scholars who will be officially named today.

His parents fled the genocide in Cambodia decades ago and landed in a refugee camp in Vietnam. There, in August 1984, Kuong Ly was born. He and his family would bounce around refugee camps throughout Southeast Asia for the next six years before reaching the United States.

That experience has driven Ly to devote his life to human rights advocacy and immigration reform, and his pursuit could receive a huge boost today with his selection as a Marshall Scholar, a prestigious academic honor the British government awards to about 40 US students each year.

"I was very fortunate," said Ly, a Woburn resident who attends Boston College, noting that many young refugees do not have the opportunity to go to college. "My life has been built on tragedy and hope."

Ly is among a dozen college students with New England ties who join the latest crop of Marshall Scholars. Named for George Marshall, a former US secretary of state, the scholarships cover up to three years of study at a British university of a student's choice, and carry an annual value of $60,000.

"They become part of an elite club," said Joseph Pickerill, political press and public affairs director for the British Consulates General for New England. "They tend to go into government or public service, or they become captains of industry."

More than 1,500 Americans have become Marshall Scholars, including US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Tom Friedman and Dan Yergin.

The recipients often already boast impressive resumes that include public service projects in a foreign land. To receive a Marshall, the students must endure a rigorous application and interview process at consulate offices around the country, including the one in Boston.

Some residents try to stand apart by cracking the imposing atmosphere with humor - even if they risk putting the panel of five judges on edge. Interviews were conducted last month.

Canton resident Nathaniel Sharpe, who is a mechanical engineering major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, concluded his interview in Boston by juggling. He did so while standing beneath a portrait of King George and next to an ornate cabinet of 17th-century silver. All the while, he twisted his body while flinging around a colorful cup-like object on a string.

"I don't want to say that was the clinching factor" in his selection, Pickerill said. "He was a well-rounded candidate."

Sharpe, who performed as a teenager in Circus Smirkus with his younger brother, said he could tell the judges were nervous about the juggling at first, with one of them pointing out the valuable items in his midst, but Sharpe said that did not make him nervous.

"I've juggled knives before," said Sharpe.

He also is a pole vaulter and captain of MIT's indoor and outdoor track teams, and competed in a robotics competition in Thailand last year.

MIT students garnered the most recipients for a New England-based college, with four students selected, according to the Marshall program. However, a Harvard University spokesman said yesterday that his institution also has four recipients. One recipient was omitted from the official announcement because did not send in his paperwork in time, the spokesman explained.

The Globe was unable to confirm that information last night with the Marshall program.

Richard Lin, who attends MIT, helped to engineer a mobile clinic in Tanzania, where there is roughly one physician for every 50,000 residents. Working with a doctor, he outfitted a van with solar electric equipment. The six-month-long project enabled the physician to set up shop at various marketplaces in the northern section of the country.

"People would just flock to it," said Lin, of Richfield, Ohio, who is interested in working on global health issues.

The other recipients with New England ties are Jeffrey Cloutier of Berlin, N.H., who attends Middlebury College; Michelle Prairie of Vernon, Conn., the University of Connecticut; Robert Kubala of Austin, Texas, Boston College; Kyle Mahowald of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Harvard; David Reshef of Livingston, N.J., MIT; John Sheffield of Fayetteville, N.C., Harvard; Anjali Tripathi of Woodland Hills, Calif., MIT; and Emma Wu of Camarillo, Calif., Harvard.

Harvard officials said that Andrew Miller of Chicago was the fourth Harvard student selected.

The British government started the scholarship in 1953 in gratitude to the United States for assisting them after World War II under the Marshall Plan, America's economic aid strategy for the reconstruction of Europe.

Correction: Because of an editing error, a story in yesterday's Metro section about local Marshall Scholars misstated which college Robert Kubala attends. Kubala is one of two Boston College students who won a Marshall Scholarship this year. Also, because of incomplete information to the Globe, the story also omitted one Marshall Scholar with local ties, Derron Wallace, who graduated from Wheaton College in 2007.