Senior named UD's newest Rhodes Scholarship recipient

No one who knows Thomas Pellathy is the least bit surprised to learn that the earnest young scholar is the latest University of Delaware senior to earn a Rhodes Scholarship. The third UD student to win the prestigious award in the last 10 years, Pellathy learned of his scholarship over the weekend after a round of interviews with scholarship committee members in Washington, D.C.

While Stephanie Vega, his wife of five months, waited anxiously in a D.C. coffee shop, Pellathy said he enjoyed chatting with the interview committee and had a good feeling going into the final session where the awards were announced.

"When they announced the four regional winners, they called my name first. Then, they talked to the four of us and gave us lots of papers to fill out, but it's all a blur to me. All I wanted to do was run to the coffee shop and tell Stephanie," he said.

"He was later than I thought he would be," Vega, herself a UD alumna and current graduate student, said. "At first, I kept hoping he'd get there and be a winner, but the later it got, the more I just wanted him to get there and be safe!

"I was pretty sure as soon as I saw him round the corner outside the shop that he had won, but when he came in, he didn't say anything. I had to ask him and then he just couldn't talk. He just held up the papers and pointed to them. Then, we started screaming. We were so excited," Vega said.

After phone calls to both sets of parents and UD President David P. Roselle, the two headed back to Newark to celebrate.

"We got married in July, I'm graduating and now this. It's been a whirlwind six months," Pellathy said.

Pellathy will graduate in January with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and philosophy and a master's degree in linguistics.

"Philosophy is the lens through which I see most of the world," he said. "Philosophy and a general concern for understanding people and the world around them is fundamental to the way I approach the world."

Pellathy said he chose to attend UD because he was accepted into the honors program, won a Du Pont Scholarship to cover expenses and was elated to learn the University would allow him to defer it for a year while he traveled in Europe. He also was named an Alison Scholar.

"Originally, I thought I would double major in philosophy and physics. But, at UD, I became interested in mathematics from my philosophical inquiries. My interest in the philosophy of the mind led to my interest in cognitive sciences. I wanted to do some empirical work to supplement my philosophical thinking, and the master's degree just sort of dropped out of all that," he said.

The fifth of seven children, Pellathy is from Latrobe, Pa. His parents were Hungarian immigrants, displaced after World War II. They met in Washington, D.C., after immigrating separately to the U.S. There is a possibility that they were assisted in their re-settlement in this country by an uncle of Mark Miller, UD professor of political science and international relations, who resettled Hungarian refugees for the St. Vincent DePaul Society. Miller, ironically, is one of Pellathy's closest friends and mentors.

Pellathy credits Miller with influencing his choice of a future career in the field of immigration policy. Miller helped place Pellathy in an internship last year with the International Center for Migration Policy Development in Vienna.

While there, Pellathy worked as a liaison officer for several international immigration conferences and did a weekly analysis of the tumultuous situation in Kosovo and its impact on refugee flow.

While he modestly says he worked on making policy recommendations, Miller is much more effusive in his praise for Pellathy's work in Vienna.

"What struck me about Tom is that he had all this diplomatic experience and gained such an extensive knowledge of the Kosovo Liberation Army. He had an extraordinary internship and was working in migration from the perspective of the very top policy-makers. Then, when he got back to Delaware, he wanted to learn about those same issues from the perspective of the people–the immigrants who are actually involved," Miller said.

Toward that end, Pellathy became involved with Miller's studies of the Guatemalan community in Georgetown, Del., and the two are now writing a book about the dramatic changes that have occurred in the small town as its immigrant population has swelled from zero to 50 percent in the last 10 years.

Vega, who is from Paraguay, has an undergraduate degree in economics from UD and is getting her master's in Spanish. She also is involved in a project in Georgetown with Pellathy, working with Mike Oats, a documentary filmmaker, on a film about the immigrant families. Pellathy also is fluent in Spanish, as well as his family's native Hungarian and for the film, the young couple have conducted numerous interviews in Georgetown.

Through their work they have become close friends with many Guatemalan families. Just last week, they were invited to a Quince Años, a traditional coming out party for one family's 15-year-old daughter.

Miller said he considers Pellathy more of a colleague than a student and that it has been a great honor to know someone of such high caliber.

"I was fairly confident Tom would be selected [by the Rhodes committee]," Miller said.

Mary Dugan, the former director of youth programs at Wilmington's Latin American Community Center, agrees. She said she remembers Pellathy as an exceptionally professional, compassionate and down-to-Earth tutor who was good at working with young people of all ages.

"I met Tom when he came to the center as a volunteer tutor and he's become a friend. I absolutely was not surprised to learn that he had won a Rhodes Scholarship. If anyone could do that, it would be Tom."

Leonard P. Stark, a 1991 UD graduate, who won a Rhodes Scholarship in 1990, serves on the state selection committee that chose Pellathy to go on in the Rhodes competition. Stark, who currently is practicing corporate law in Wilmington, said that out of the committee's five very strong candidates, Pellathy emerged as "just this phenomenal person."

"Tom is a standout in so many academic areas and, when you combine that with the hands-on work he's done with refugees and the children in Wilmington, it's just very inspirational to see all that in one person," Stark said.

Colin Phillips, who was an assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science at UD from 1997-2000, worked closely with Pellathy on research in cognitive neuroscience.

Phillips, now a professor at the University of Maryland, was introduced to Pellathy in 1997 by Douglas de Lorenzo, UD's 1997 Rhodes Scholar who is studying anthropology at Oxford and currently conducting research in Kampala while the university is on term break.

"Douglas–just like Tom– completed a master's degree in linguistics and cognitive science simultaneous with his BA. Both Tom and Douglas benefited from the fact that the linguistics/ cognitive science program allowed them to be treated as graduate students from their sophomore year," Phillips said.

"Since 1997, Tom and I have worked closely together on studies of how speech is encoded in the human brain," Phillips explained. "Our work uses recordings of the minute magnetic fields created by neural activity in the brain and examines the ability of low-level areas of the brain to encode high-level abstract categories.

"As an example of Tom's attention to detail, when he was spending a month at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology making brain recordings, it became clear that the recordings were being contaminated by magnetic fields generated by the Boston subway, which ran a few blocks away. To solve this, Tom found out that the subway closed down from 2-5 a.m. and then proceeded to run all of the experiments in the middle of the night."

Phillips added that Pellathy is one of the main authors of a paper that is appearing this month in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, the leading academic journal in its field, as well as a number of other papers to be published shortly.

"Tom stands out both because of his academic breadth and because of his intellectual maturity. He has been more like a colleague than a student, and I enjoyed the many hours that we spent arguing about all kinds of topics. It has been a joy to work with him," Phillips said.

Meanwhile, as Pellathy "takes time to enjoy the moment," he is contemplating his future at Oxford.

"First, I have to graduate from here, and then we'll sit down and make definite plans. Stephanie has to finish up her master's in the spring and I have to get a summer job. At Oxford, I'll probably enroll in the development studies program in the Queen Elizabeth House. The first year, the program gives you grounding in economics, politics, history and anthropology. The second year, you can specialize and one of the choices is the migration issue. The House also is the home of the Refugees Study Center, which would be of great benefit to me."

Meantime, he is busy finishing up finals at UD.

"Poor kid, here he wins a Rhodes Scholarship on Sunday and has to rush back to take a final on Monday," Miller said. "I think he should have asked for an exemption. But, that wouldn't be Tom."

–Beth Thomas

UD's Rhodes Scholars