The British government in London, U.K., announced via their embassy in Washington, D.C., that Alexander Dyer, a Joe E. Newsome High School graduate, was named a winner of the George Marshall Scholarship and will pursue graduate studies at Cambridge University.
According to the British Embassy, the recipients, considered among America’s most accomplished undergraduate university students and recent graduates, were chosen following an intense selection process and will begin graduate studies at top universities across the United Kingdom next year.
The Marshall Scholarship program was created by an act of the British Parliament in 1953 and highly endorsed by Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill as a living memorial to former U.S. Secretary of State General George C. Marshall and the USA for assistance under the Marshall Plan. The scholarship allows for up to three years of graduate study in any academic topic at any university in the U.K., which is home to 17 of the top 100 universities in the world.
The scholars will fly to London in the fall of 2024 and individually meet the prime minister of the United Kingdom and other senior members of parliament during a formal reception in London to welcome them to the United Kingdom.
Dyer is a senior at Harvard College in the Class of 2024. He is a Phi Beta Kappa member at Harvard, a John Harvard Scholar, a recipient of the Detur Book Prize at Harvard, and winner of Harvard’s Lowell House William & Mary Lee Bossert Prize. He will graduate in May, earning a bachelor’s and concurrent master’s in electrical engineering. At Cambridge, Dyer will continue his graduate studies in the fields of health, medicine and society, with an emphasis on investigating how disability interacts with people who are experiencing homelessness. Following his studies at Cambridge, Dyer plans to attend medical school to pursue an M.D. degree and then embark upon a career as a surgeon and medical researcher.
Dyer also recently won the Schwarzman Scholarship to study at the Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. The Schwarzman fellowship aims to create the next generation of leaders that respond to the geopolitical landscape of the 21st century. According to Stephen Schwarzman, the scholarship’s founding trustee, chair and CEO of Blackstone Group, those leading the future must understand China today. Dyer declined this honor to accept the Marshall Scholarship to study at Cambridge.
Dyer and his family live in FishHawk Ranch. He is a United States Presidential Scholar, and in 2020 he was the valedictorian of the Class of 2020 at Newsome High School. He is also an Eagle Scout (Silver Palm) and member of the Order of the Arrow in the BSA National Honor Society.
