BEAVER TOWNSHIP South Range graduate wins Rhodes Scholarship

Amber Raub wants to work in the U.S. space program.
STAFF/WIRE REPORT
BOSTON -- When she was growing up in a working-class household in Beaver Township, Amber Raub's parents always taught her to pursue her dreams.
Raub aimed for the stars and seems well on her way.
The 2000 graduate of South Range High School and aspiring astronaut was one of two Ohioans named to the newest class of Rhodes Scholars.
"It gives you goose bumps," Keith Raub, Amber's father, said this morning of his daughter's achievement. "It's beyond anything you could dream of. It's put a smile on my face."
Amber, one of three children, grew up in humble surroundings. Her father operates a home-based windshield repair business. Her mother, Debbie, is a custodian at South Range Elementary.
But Amber, who also is a leading cadet at West Point Military Academy, always has aimed to succeed.
"She's been driven to do well, and it seems to come easy to her," Keith Raub said.
"It couldn't happen to a nicer girl," said Dennis Dunham, principal at South Range High School, where Raub was one of four valedictorians.
"You just knew she was going to go on to bigger and better things," Dunham added.
The future
Raub is in her final year at the military academy in West Point, N.Y. A mechanical engineering major, she's second in her class and hopes to work as an engineer for the U.S. space program. Her requirement to serve in the military will be deferred until her return.
Raub has received the Gold Star and Gold Wreath for achieving the status of Distinguished Cadet and Superintendent's Individual Award-winner, and having a 3.67 grade-point average.
Besides Amber, the newest class of Rhodes Scholars includes a former wing commander at the U.S. Air Force Academy, a political science major who has worked with refugees in the Balkans and Afghanistan, and a national Frisbee champion.
Other Ohio winner
The other Ohio winner is Jeffrey Ishizuka of the Columbus suburb of Worthington.
"I'm just completely blown away. Things have been really crazy," Ishizuka said in a telephone interview Sunday night. "It's the sort of thing that makes a lot of sense in a pipe dream, but you don't really expect it to happen to you."
As the winners were announced late Saturday and early Sunday, many of the finalists waited impatiently at ceremonies in cities around the country.
"It was really nerve-racking," said Rachael A. Wagner, 21, a winning Harvard University senior from Virginia Beach, Va., who waited with a group in Washington. "I turned to the woman next to me and said, 'Did he say my name?' I was really shocked and excited."
Harvard led the class of 2004 -- the 100th year of American Rhodes Scholars -- with four of the 32 American scholars. The U.S. Military Academy, Stanford University, Boston College, Williams College and Washington University can each boast of two.
The winners were selected from 963 applicants endorsed by 366 colleges and universities to attend the University of Oxford in England starting next October. Their scholarships provide two or three years of study.
HIV research
Ishizuka, a senior chemistry major at Williams College in Massachusetts, plans to research HIV vaccines at Oxford.
Peter Grudin, an assistant dean at Williams, said Ishizuka is one of the school's top three students in chemistry in the past 15 years, noting the competitive department is "probably the strongest in the college."
"He's a totally honest, totally generous young man with no egotism," Grudin said. "Very modest and really engaged both intellectually and morally in how he lives his life."
Ishizuka's mother, Karen, said he's volunteered at a clinic for children with HIV and AIDS in a remote mountain region of Honduras and helped secure a grant for the clinic to obtain new medications that help the children live longer with the disease.
He also is on the Williams wrestling team and tutors students in writing, Grudin said.
"It's just a matter of learning to balance things," Ishizuka said of his busy schedule.
Rhodes Scholarships were created in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes. Winners are selected on the basis of high academic achievement, personal integrity, leadership potential and physical vigor, among other attributes.