Hayden Dahmm '15, an Honors engineering major and McCabe Scholar from Springfield, Pa., is one of 31 scholars chosen from a national pool to receive Marshall Scholarships this year. The scholarship provides full tuition and living expenses to support two years of study at any university in the United Kingdom. Prior to Dahmm, the most recent recipient of the Marshall Scholarship from Swarthmore was Joel Mittleman '09. 

Dahmm recently spoke to WHYY's Newsworks about what it's like to be a blind engineer: "As a sighted engineer, in theory, I could just look at a graph, and understand the relationships that it's trying to show. But since I can't see those graphs I have to find another way to access that information." Dahmm, along with help from his professors and fellow students, created a program called Sound Plot, which converts graphs into short sound bites. 

"Just because you can't see the technology doesn't mean you can't understand it," Dahmm says. Listen to the complete story. Dahmm, who is also pursuing a minor in environmental studies, has been featured in The Swarthmore College Bulletin, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and on 6ABC. 

Founded by an act of Parliament in 1953, the Marshall Scholarship Program commemorates the ideals of the Marshall Plan and expresses the gratitude of the British people. Awarded annually, the scholarship strengthens the U.S.-U.K. relationship by exposing future American leaders to British culture and institutions through study in its best academic programs.