VIDEO: Local Man Prepared To Head To England

TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) – A Belden man has been awarded a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship and will study at Oxford University next year.

Noah Barbieri  is home from Millsapps College where he is a senior and student class president at the Jackson school and carries a 4.0 grade point average. When he was in the 8th grade, something happened to change the course of his life.

“I dreamed of playing sports in middle school and in high school . I was born with a rare chest deformity where my chest was caved in. And they had to put a 16-inch medal rod in my chest to fix this. And the thing that hurt worst in the entire world was to laugh. And I also couldn’t play any sports at that time so I kind of retreated into myself and I decided that since I couldn’t play sports. I couldn’t do what I loved that I was going to decide to read a book every single week for the rest of life. And that’s really what set me off on this path. Every single week my world was expanding. And there’s this real stigma against males particularly reading books that it’s just for nerds but it really set me off and set me on to this path I’m on today. I don’t think if I would have made that decision in the 8th grade to start reading books so vigorously that I could have been a Rhodes scholar,”said Barbieri.

Barbieri has become a prolific reader.

He says he has actually read all the books in this bookshelf in his room at his parents house.

He has had many accomplishments during his undergraduate time at Millsaps which have helped him become one of only 32 people in the United States to win a coveted Rhodes scholarship out of thousands who applied.

“They look if you’re dedicated to public service in the long run. At Millsapps College I’ve served on student government for a long time. I now serve as student body president and I do a lot of research on how to address problems in Mississippi. And they also look a t people who can keep up at the school where the scholarship sends them, which is Oxford in England. I look for individuals who will thrive and succeed there. And I am a triple major in economics philosophy and mathematics. And just the whole combination of my research my passion for making a difference in Mississippi and specifically addressing inequality,”said Barbieri.

Barbieri has actually published several articles and even this book.

“We’re so proud of him. We’ve know him since he was a baby of course. And so we’ve seen him grow up. We’ve see him be a problem solver analytical he can solve problems and I just that there’s big plans for him to make a positive change in this world and we couldn’t more proud of him. He works really really hard,”said Barbieri.

Barbieri says after he finishes at Oxford, he plans to continue his education in the United States, but he hasn’t decided between Harvard or MIT.

The Barbieri family will get a lot of frequent flyer miles as they intend to visit Noah in England a lot during his two years at Oxford.