By Donna St. George and Megan Greenwell
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 20, 2006

With aspirations to influence the larger world -- in international relations and politics and literature -- four students with ties to the Washington region have been named to the 2007 class of Rhodes scholars, officials from the trust announced yesterday.

Two of the students grew up locally -- one in Virginia, the other in Maryland -- and two attend or recently graduated from universities in the region. They were among 32 recipients nationally for the prestigious scholarships to study for two or three years at Oxford University in England.

"I'm still six inches off the ground right now," said Sean A. Genis, 21, a U.S. Naval Academy midshipman ranked first in the senior class who has co-authored a paper for a scholarly journal on the acoustic detection of landmines.

One of the midshipman's professors noted that, along with his physics background and weighty research, Genis is a cyclist with a self-deprecating sense of humor. He started his Rhodes essay with the sentence: "I crash bicycles." In his first year on the academy's cycling team, Genis said, he had 12 mishaps. He persisted. Last year, his crash count was one.

With the scholarship, Genis will go to Oxford for a two-year course of study before he becomes a Navy submarine officer. "I would like to one day work at the frontier where science and technology intersect with international security policy," said Genis, who was raised in Sharon, Pa., near the Ohio border.

Sharing his honor -- and elation -- locally are Maria Repnikova, 22, a Latvian immigrant and recent graduate of Georgetown University; Casey N. Cep, 20, a Harvard University senior who grew up on Maryland's Eastern Shore; and Nicholas J. Shelly, 21, a senior at the U.S. Air Force Academy with roots in Annandale.

All are accomplished students with an expansive sense of what lies ahead.

Repnikova is in China on a Fulbright scholarship, studying immigration between China and Russia. She plans to delve deeper into migration studies at Oxford University, helped by her fluency in five languages: Russian, Mandarin, Latvian, Spanish and English.

Her interests stem from her life experience, she said. She arrived in the United States at age 14, the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor who lost her family in a ghetto of Belarus. She grew up in Vermont, quickly became an honors student and at Georgetown worked in filming and reporting for the university television station.

"She has extraordinary intellect, a powerful commitment to make a difference with her life and a heroic family story," said Daniel R. Porterfield, associate professor of English at Georgetown.

"Migration turned my life around," Repnikova said in a statement. "I intend to be someone who makes comparable opportunity securely available to the millions of people who in the years ahead must face and cross the borders of our globalized world."

With a focus on literature and possibly journalism, Cep -- who was raised in Cordova, Md., not far from Easton -- plans to explore "what people believe in and how they live their lives through those beliefs" at Oxford during her two-year program in theology.

"It's a wonderful opportunity to be given, and I hope I can make everyone who has made it possible proud," she said.

At Harvard, Cep is president of the Harvard Advocate literary magazine and an editor at both the Harvard Crimson and Harvard Book Review. For her senior thesis, she is writing a novel under the guidance of her faculty mentor, author Jamaica Kincaid.

Her book is set on the Eastern Shore, where she grew up and graduated from Easton High School. "I hope to end up back in the area and be of service," Cep said. "It could be journalism; it could be literature."

Shelly, a 2003 graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, has his sights on international work.

A senior at the Air Force Academy, Shelly speaks German and did a semester as an exchange student at the German Air Force Academy. He has performed in several musical theater productions, played piano for the chapel orchestra and played squash at the academy.

At Oxford, he hopes to expand his focus from his undergraduate study of computer sciences toward politics and economics or international relations. He will then work as an Air Force pilot but hopes to one day be the Air Force's attache or the U.S. ambassador to Germany.

"I was completely shocked," he said. "I am thrilled to be part of this great group of scholars."

The winners of the scholarship, named for British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes, were selected from 896 applications endorsed by 340 colleges and universities. The 32 recipients come from 21 educational institutions. Harvard had the most Rhodes scholars this year, with six; Yale University had four; Stanford University had three; and Washington University in St. Louis had two.