Montco student a Rhodes scholar

David Carel, 21, will study social policy while at Oxford.
David Carel, 21, will study social policy while at Oxford.

David Carel of Penn Valley was named one of 32 who will pursue studies in England.

By Ron Todt, Associated Press
Posted: November 20, 2012

A Yale student from Penn Valley, near Narberth, will head to England to study at Oxford as one of 32 Rhodes scholars named for 2013.

David Carel, an economics major, received the scholarship established in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes.

"I keep sort of checking my phone to see if this actually happened," Carel said Sunday. "It's so hard to believe, I just sort of assume I dreamed the whole thing."

Carel, 21, said he spent much of his undergraduate years studying global health economics, mostly public health, and plans to study comparative social policy.

"It's a way to study not just health or education or, in this case, welfare economics, but the intersection of all three," he said.

A trip to explore the South African roots of his family led to work in the KwaZulu-Natal region of western South Africa, where he joined Peace Corps volunteers and later a nonprofit working with at-risk youths who aren't in school and don't have jobs, trying to prevent widespread alcoholism, depression, and other problems. Greater knowledge of the AIDS and tuberculosis epidemics led him to become an advocate on those issues, he said.

Carel said his experience with rural education in South Africa prompted him to join a friend on an educational technology startup that works to provide data for school systems in the United States on the environment of their schools and student feedback on teachers.

And greater knowledge of the AIDS and tuberculosis epidemics led him to join other students to work on AIDS advocacy, he said.

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