Zar Zavala '11 wins Rhodes Scholarship

Baltazar A. Zavala '11, with concentrations in engineering sciences and neurobiology, was among three Harvard College-affiliated students to be chosen as Rhodes Scholars for 2010.

A varsity football player, he has been on three trips to the Dominican Republic with Engineers Without Borders to develop clean water systems.

He has worked as a research assistant in neuroscience labs at Harvard and in Shanghai. Zavala was born in Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, and emigrated to El Paso with his mother when he was young. At Oxford, Baltazar will do the M.Sc. in neuroscience.

The Boston Globe, covering the Harvard-Yale game, reported on Zavala's win-win:

Harvard senior receiver Zar Zavala was celebrating on the field with the rest of his teammates when his fiancee, Melanie Johns,handed him a cell phone. The awaiting text message read: “Congratulations, you are a Rhodes Scholar."

“Today definitely was the best day of my life, it was a blessing,’’ said Zavala, a four-year walk-on who arrived at the Stadium a few minutes before the half after his early-morning flight from Houston, where he had spent Friday interviewing for the scholarship.

“Now I have to call them back and accept,’’ added the jubilant El Paso native, who carries a 3.92 GPA as a neurobiology and engineering major. “When I got here, it was kind of dead, we were trailing, down by 7, and not really moving the ball. And then to see us come back, and win the game . . . I can’t think of a better way to end it.’’

Zavala,who wants to be a neurosurgeon, will turn down his Marshall Scholarship, also a two-year study in England, to spend two years at Oxford.

Rhodes Scholarships provide all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in England, and may allow funding in some instances for four years.

They were created in 1902 by the Will of Cecil Rhodes, British philanthropist and African colonial pioneer. The first class of American Rhodes Scholars entered Oxford in 1904; those elected today will enter Oxford in October 2011.