December 8, 2000

Skelly McCay is 2001 winner of British Marshall Scholarship

Loyola University and officials of the British Marshall Scholarship committee announced that Skelly Bruce McCay, a Loyola senior and New Orleans native, was awarded one of these coveted awards recently for 2001-2003. He was one of 40 winners chosen from over 1,500 applicants. The scholarships are awarded on a regional basis and McCay won in the South-western region.

McCay entered Loyola when he was 15 years old and will be only 19 when he graduates in May 2001. He is pursuing a double major in philosophy and English and has an extensive list of extracurricular activities to his credit. He has served as the first undergraduate editorial assistant for the New Orleans Review, a nationally distributed literary journal, and tutored in the English Writing Lab at Loyola, working with students who do not speak English as their first language. McCay is also the first undergraduate teaching assistant in the lab.

McCay has been elected to the Dean/Student Advisory Committee as the representative of both the English and philosophy departments. His charge in these capacities is to communicate student opinions to the administration and to the college assemblies at which student concerns are addressed. He also is a founding member of Aleph, an organization that raises money for small student scholarships, and whose members tutor New Orleans public school students in reading and writing.

A classical pianist, an accomplished gourmet chef, and a published author of poetry, prose, and criticism, McCay is also the founder of the Loyola Croquet Society, a group of students and faculty who interact together weekly while playing croquet.

Well-liked by his fellow students, he is also respected as a scholar by his teachers. Letters written in support of his application for the scholarship laud him as one of the most able students encountered in 30 years of teaching by several of his recommenders. The letters continue to say he is well-motivated and self-directed. McCay is a member of the English honors and National Honor societies.

McCay plans to pursue a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 19^th and 20^th century Continental/Pluralistic philosophy with an emphasis in phenomenology, pragmatism and philosophy of the mind. He intends to pursue philosophy-based clinical psychology as his life work.

The Marshall Scholarships were instituted by the British Parliament in 1953 as a practical and enduring gesture of thanks on behalf of the British people for assistance received from the United States in the aftermath of the World War II. They are funded by the Diplomatic Wing of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The awards are named after General George C. Marshall, President Harry S. Truman's "Architect of Peace," whose personal support made the European Recovery Program, or Marshall Plan, possible.

In 1998, Loyola was internationally recognized for academic excellence when a student was named a Rhodes Scholar. The British Marshall Scholarship is extremely prestigious and former award-winners have gone on to become leaders in government as cabinet members, Supreme Court judges and members of Congress, presidents of universities, journalists, editors and best-selling authors, and scientists and inventors.

McCay is the son of Mary and Douglas Hugh McCay. His mother is chair of the English department at Loyola.

Helen Ellis, Assistant Director of Public Affairs