CHESTERTOWN, MD—Washington College
senior James H. Schelberg has been named to the 2011 USA Today All-USA College
Academic Team, an honor bestowed on only 20 undergraduates for their academic
and community achievements. Selected from among hundreds of juniors and seniors
nominated by their colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Schelberg was
judged on criteria that included academic rigor, leadership and intellectual
endeavor that benefits society. He received a check for $2,500.
Schelberg, a double major in Humanities
and Philosophy who attends Washington College on a Hodson Trust Star
Scholarship for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was the only First
Team member selected from a small liberal-arts college. The other 19 winners
represent state universities that include Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and
California at Berkeley, or large private universities such as Johns Hopkins,
Emory, Cornell and Rice.
“I can’t imagine anyone more
deserving of this recognition or more representative of the best qualities this
generation of students has to offer the world,” says Washington College
president Mitchell B. Reiss. “The entire Washington College community is proud
of what this says about Jim Schelberg, and what his experience says about the
value of a liberal-arts education in creating a life of meaning and purpose. He
embodies the idea of moral courage.”
Schelberg, a U.S. Marine veteran, was
twice deployed into combat overseas, first to Iraq (October 2006 to April 2007)
and then to Afghanistan (November 2009 to May 2010), where he served as an
infantry corporal. He has maintained a 4.0 grade point average each of his semesters
at Washington College. He also has been a member of the Cater Society of Junior
Fellows, the College’s flagship academic enrichment program for outstanding
scholars; conducted research at the University of Oxford as part of the College’s
summer Oxford Research Seminar on Religion, Politics and Culture; taught boxing
as founder of the Washington College Mixed Martial Arts Club; and conducted important
archival research for the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American
Experience and the Maryland State Archives.
As part of the application for the
All-USA College Academic Team, Schelberg wrote about how the two years of
humanities classes he took before deploying to Afghanistan helped him become a
“more passionate humanitarian and thoughtful warrior. In the bleak landscapes
of the Helmand River Valley, ” he continued, “my experiences of loss, tragedy
and violence shaped my understanding of the destructive effects of illiteracy
and the opportunities to bring social change through education.”
He saw similar opportunities back
home, where wasted intellectual potential is such a devastating force among educationally underserved, low-income
males, many of whom end up in prisons. In summer of 2011, Schelberg created and
launched a prison outreach program called Partners in Philosophy, which offers
courses in philosophy, logic and ethics to inmates of Maryland’s Jessup
Correctional Institution. Washington College professors joined him for several
of the classes, which ranged from ethical choices in Art History to the
teachings of Plato, Buddha and Frederick Douglass. He plans to continue the
program this summer.
Those who nominated Schelberg for
the All-USA College distinction were pleased but not surprised by the
news. Joseph Prud’homme, assistant
professor of political science, has worked closely with Schelberg as one of his
academic advisors at Washington College. “I
can say without a doubt that he is the strongest student I have ever worked
with as a college professor, here at Washington College, and earlier at
Princeton and Harvard,” Prud’homme wrote in his nominating letter.
Prud’homme
describes Schelberg as “a brilliant young man, remarkable for his depth of
knowledge, his profound creativity and analytical precision, and his passion
for community service—traits of character that are deeply rooted, and which his
combat service in Afghanistan has fortified and refined. He has an unswerving
commitment to the transformative power of education,” Prud’homme adds, “and the
importance of critical and reflective thinking for renewing lives and
communities.”
Marine Chief Warrant Officer Steve
J. Rose, who supervised Schelberg in Iraq’s Anbar Province, saw him tested
under the daily stress of combat conditions and was impressed with the younger Marine’s
intelligence, character and courage. He described Schelberg’s enthusiasm for learning
new cultures and meeting Iraqis and Afghanis, getting to know the fishermen on
the Euphrates or the farmers of the Helmand River Valley. In a situation where
it is often impossible to tell innocent civilian from enemy combatant, he
wrote, “Jim was the first to shake hands, or to laugh with new foreign friends.
His caring and compassion for strangers was obvious, and daily he influenced
those around him to make personal connections to the civilians they protected.
I have seen him lead with courage and the highest professional conduct while
under enemy fire in combat. … Jim has seen firsthand the worst of human
behavior and responded with the highest human ideals.”
“Jim is a classic humanist: an intellectual who delves
into the complexities and ambiguities of human experience, and ponders the
nature and limits of our understanding,” says Adam Goodheart, director of
Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American
Experience, where Schelberg is a student associate. “He is also an idealist in
the best sense, a person who believes that words and ideas have the power to
transform lives – and, indeed, entire societies – for the better.”
