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BY AMELIA POSSANZA

In print | Published December 3, 2009 — Updated December 23, 2009 19:34

Mark Dlugash ’08 was recently named a Rhodes Scholar. Thirty-two Americans were awarded the scholarship for two years of study at the University of Oxford. The Phoenix’s Amelia Possanza spoke with Dlugash to find out more about his future plans and his time at Swat.

AP: What were you doing when you found out you’d been named a Rhodes Scholar?

*MD: *We were all playing cards. It was me and 12 other finalists. We were all waiting outside the interview. They could come in at any moment and announce who got the scholarship or that one of us would have to go in and re-interview. We all just sat there for three hours playing cards. Every time someone would walk down the hall we would all turn around really quickly. Then they lined us up firing squad style and announced it.

AP: What have you been doing since you graduated?

MD: Lots of different things. I worked at the U.S. Public Service Academy to help start a national undergraduate college for national public service based on the U.S. military academies… That was one thing. I’ve done a bunch of other things. Like right now I’m working mostly as a tutor.

AP: Did you have a contingency plan?

MD: Yeah. This was really unexpected. I actually just decided to go to grad school. I was hoping to do an MSW program at Columbia with a specialization working with refugees. This was a big shock. It definitely wasn’t planned.

*AP: *_What do you plan to study when you’re at Oxford?_

MD: There are two Master’s degrees I want to do. The first one is in forced migration at the Refugee Studies Centre and the second one is a Master’s degree in international development in what’s called global governments.

AP: Can you tell me a little more about the Refugee Studies Centre?

MD: The Refugee Studies Centre is supposed to be amazing, and there are two professors there who’ve done work that’s similar to what I’m interested in doing. One of them is Simon Addison, and he’s done work in Northern Uganda, and then there’s another professor who’s done a lot of work on the politics surrounding asylum processes and how asylum works. When I think about the future I’m really interested in going into international human rights law and working on asylum cases, so for me it’s just an amazing program and I’m really excited about it.

*AP: *_Is there anything that you did at Swarthmore that got you interested in the subject?_

*MD: *I think the first thing was I went with Katie Camillus [’08] to Uganda. Katie was a Lang scholar, and she set up a microloan program. Meeting with people there who had been displaced from the north made me see really clearly the vast array of issues that Siwanese face. After that I worked at the Nationality Services Center in Philadelphia, and I worked on asylum cases for women who are gaining refugee status or protection under the Violence Against Women Act, and a lot of them were immigrants. The more I saw those kinds of issues, it became clear to me that that’s actually what I wanted to do next.

AP:_ Do you miss anything about Swarthmore?_

MD: Yeah, I miss it so much. I miss my professors, who were amazing. I miss psychology.

AP: Do you think that Oxford’s going to be really different?

*MD: *There’s supposed to be a tutorial system where you work one on one with an advisor, and I’m really looking forward to that. Our honors program is based on the tutorial program where you have external examiners come in. In a lot of ways there are similarities, but there is no replacing the faculty at Swarthmore. The professors here are amazing.

*AP: *_Do you have any advice to current Swarthmore students?_

MD: There’s so many resources at college when you’re an undergrad. When you graduate, you lose a lot of those resources. I got so much help from Career Services, definitely from the prizes and fellowships office, from Melissa Mandos, and just from meeting with my professors one on one. We have unbelievable opportunities and you don’t really have the same kind after you graduate.

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