Montgomery County native named Rhodes scholar

Two Yale students from Pennsylvania will be heading to England to study at Oxford as Rhodes scholars.

Senior David Carel of Montgomery County’s Penn Valley and sophomore Dakota McCoy of western Pennsylvania’s Wexford are recipients of the scholarships established in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes.

Officials said Carel is an economics major and AIDS advocate who plans to study comparative social policy at Oxford. Fluent in Zulu and Hebrew, he is lead drummer in a West African dance troupe and teaches Rukdan Israeli dancing.

McCoy, nicknamed Cody, has researched ecology, primate cognition and evolutionary biology and will study zoology at Oxford. She sings with Yale’s a cappella groups and competes in javelin and hurdles on the track team, where she is in the school’s all-time top 10 in each.