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Small Colleges Boast Two Rhodes Scholars

A couple of top-flight students from Oregon and Montana - both of whom attend small colleges in the west - have won prestigious Rhodes scholarships for 2015. Aven P, SatreMeloy of Helena Montana and William J. Rathje of Lake Oswego, Oregon, a town just south of Portland, are among 32 U-S winners of the Rhodes scholarships for next year.

Meloy, who is now a White House intern working in the office of Energy and Climate Change, graduated last year from Santa Clara University in California. He also won a Fullbright scholarship to Turkey. Meloy holds double majors in Politcal Science and Environmental Science. In his time at Oxford University, he'll do graduate level work in Geography and the Environment.

Rathje is a senior at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, a small liberal arts college. He's completing double majors in Computer Science and English Literature and is a Goldwater scholar. He's composed a full-length musical that was performed in Portland, and in his spare time, Rathje's developed four lPhone apps.

He plans to earn a master of science degree in computer science at Oxford.

Only 32 Rhodes scholarships are awarded in the US each year, and competition is fierce. The winners were picked from a pool of 877 candidates nominated by their colleges and universities.

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