ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 26, 1995 TAG: 9512260016
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
Virginia Tech's first Rhodes Scholar in a generation settled back on a couch and asked the question on every art-lover's mind this fall.
"Have you seen the Vermeer yet?"
As the chairwoman of Virginia's Rhodes selection committee says, they look for breadth of intellect and character when they look for the country's top scholars.
Mark Embree's a 21-year-old numerical analysis expert - he knows how to analyze satellite flight by computer - who buys independent label discs in his spare time and for fun last read Graham Greene.
Mary Baldwin College President Cynthia Tyson, who was chairwoman of the state's Rhodes committee, said Embree boasts "not only thorough preparation in mathematics, but also an interest in poetry."
Tech's Sugar Bowl-bound football team may be grabbing headlines, but Embree's scholarship is a major touchdown for Tech academics.
"It's nice to finally have some company," said Bill Lewis, who graduated in 1962 with the university's last Rhodes Scholarship.
"I'm still stunned," Embree said, the day after returning to Blacksburg from whirlwind weekend of interviews in Atlanta, at which time the awards were announced.
The winners, all graduating seniors, spend two and sometimes three years studying at Oxford University in England. But more's expected from them than just good grades.
"A more important charge, which goes along with scholarship, is [to] dedicate your life to service," Embree said.
Right now, that probably means a career as a research scientist.
Embree, whose younger sister, Elizabeth, also is a student at Tech, boasts an impressive curriculum vitae. With a minor in English and history to go along with his majors in math and computer science - "I didn't want to spend my life in front of a computer" - Embree also has done research for the naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., and is a teaching assistant in Tech's Computer Science department.
Embree credits both his professor Cal Ribbons and the University Honors Program with giving him much of the support that's aided his success at Tech.
It was in 1990 that some of Tech's most decorated faculty members persuaded the powers that be to let them take over the honors program so Tech's best and brightest would have better help plugging into the university curriculum. Charles Dudley became director, a variety of professors pitched in to mentor the young scholars, and, as a matter of course, the 1,500 students enrolled began to apply for the academic world's prestigious honors.
The program's seen a steady rise in the number of students who've won.
Until 1992, only one person had won a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. Now, 14 have been nominated and seven have won - including Embree.
Just a week before the Rhodes awards were announced Dec. 10, Embree learned he'd won a British Marshall scholarship.
"That's the second most prestigious scholarship," laughed Dudley, who is clearly delighted with Embree's success.
The young man will have to give up the Marshall - with its study in Britain - for the Rhodes.
But asked how much he credits the program with aiding Embree, Dudley said the young scholar stood out from the start.
"If Mark Embree had decided early enough he wanted to earn a Rhodes Scholarship, and he had gone at it with the intensity that Mark Embree is capable of, yes, I think he would have won the scholarship without us."
Just look at Embree's starting transcripts.
"He had 45 hours of advanced placement [classes,] which will wake you up right away," Dudley said.
In other words, he had enough credit hours to start college in the second half of his sophomore year.
"He was very mature, very focused," said Barbara Cowles, the assistant director for the program.
Sophomore year, he ran the honors tutoring program. The following year, he became head of the university honors association, the service branch of the programs. Dudley says Embree vastly increased the association's activities; more than 100 people pack most meetings now.
He's also known simply as a nice guy. Cowles recalled the Sunday afternoon when a young woman in the program was working on a newsletter, but the page templates had vanished from the computer. Cowles called Embree and asked him to check the computer.
Never mind that he was finishing an application for a National Science Foundation fellowship application - due the next day.
"He took 45 minutes and set up a new template," said Cowles. "He did not tell me that - she told me."
During the strenuous week of interviews that preceded the Atlanta round of interviews, Embree called Dudley with updates of his progress. At one point during Embree's winning streak, Dudley recalls saying "You haven't said you won."
"'I haven't met any losers,' " Dudley says Embree told him.
And, when Embree finally won the Rhodes, he called his adviser and said: "Bill Lewis is not alone."
Lewis can give his young successor some valuable insight.
"My career has taken me twice into the government, I worked at the World Bank, and taught at Princeton and at the University of California," he said from his office in Washington, where he now is the director of an international think-tank called the McKinsey Global Institute.
The scholarship is "a remarkably good vehicle for broadening one's horizons about the big issues of our times," Lewis said. "It clearly led me to have a career focused on the fundamental problems of our times."
Says Lewis's mom, Nancy, who still lives in Blacksburg: "He has all the openings in the world, being a Rhodes Scholar."
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