Tess Thompson, A Senior English Major,
Becomes Penn State's First-Ever Rhodes Scholar

12/20/96

University Park, Pa. -- Tess Thompson of Boalsburg, Pa., a 20-year-old senior and English major at Penn State's University Park Campus, was named Penn State's first-ever Rhodes Scholar this month.

The daughter of Donald and Melody Thompson, she is one of 32 Americans named to the 1997 class of Rhodes Scholars at Oxford University. Her father is an associate professor of food science and head of the food science department in Penn State's College of Agricultural Science.

Thompson is described by those who know her as outstanding, mega-bright, hard-working and motivated. She has won several writing awards for fiction and poetry, including Seventeen magazine's national fiction context in 1995. In addition to acting, ballet, and preparing high school students to take the Scholastic Assessment Test, her many other activities have included:

-- helping to organize the "Take Back the Night" rallies at the University Park campus;

-- volunteering at the University's Women's Resource Center;

-- tutoring in the English as a Second Language program; and

-- writing a column for the Daily Collegian, Penn State's independent student newspaper.

Thompson will graduate from Penn State in the upcoming spring semester. Starting in October 1997, she'll study English language and literature at Oxford. She plans to be a writer and teacher.

Rhodes scholarships were established at the turn of the century by the estate of Cecil Rhodes, a British philanthropist and colonialist. Winners receive scholarships to Oxford University in England. Besides tuition, the scholarships pay for living expenses and transportation.

The competition was first opened to women in 1976.

The winners were announced Dec. 7 by the Rhodes Scholarship Trust at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., near Los Angeles.

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