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Tierra Verde Resident Awarded Rhodes Scholarship

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By RAY REYES | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 23, 2008

A Tierra Verde woman attending college at the University of Pennsylvania is among 32 people from across the United States to win this year's Rhodes Scholarships.

Anthropology student Abigail Seldin, 20, curated an exhibit about Pennsylvania's Lenape Indians, a tribe long thought to have left the state by 1803. But some stayed behind, intermarrying with whites and quietly continuing their indigenous ways through the generations, she said.

Rhodes Scholarship winners were announced Sunday.

"I was very much in shock," Seldin said about hearing her name among the list of winners. "I didn't say anything coherent for about five minutes."

She is on track to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania in May with bachelor's and masters degrees in anthropology. Seldin said her dream job is being the director of a major anthropological and archaeological museum.

Her mother, Judy Seldin-Cohen, said her daughter has been "passionate about museums since she was 10 years old."

"She's passionate about the underdog and giving a voice to the voiceless," Seldin-Cohen said.

That is why Seldin's project, "Fulfilling a Prophecy: The Past and Present of the Lenape in Pennsylvania," struck a chord with her, Seldin-Cohen said.

The exhibit opened at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in September and will run for one year.

"We are thrilled," Seldin-Cohen said. "I'm proud of her and she's getting some wonderful recognition."

Seldin grew up in Tierra Verde and attended Phillips Academy, a boarding school in Massachusetts. She, along with the other Rhodes scholars, will enter Oxford University in England in October. She plans to study at the university's Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology.

This year's 32 Rhodes scholars were picked from 769 applicants endorsed by 207 colleges and universities nationwide.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report. Reporter Ray Reyes can be reached at (813) 259-7920.

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