Shelburne native Lena Ashooh is headed to Oxford University next fall on a Rhodes Scholarship, a competitive program that provides up to three years of study at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. The Champlain Valley Union High School graduate is the first Rhodes Scholar from Vermont in nearly 20 years. Now a senior at Harvard University, Ashooh has designed her own course of study on animal welfare. She plans to do her graduate research in law and philosophy. She describes her study as "condition of animals" to encompass animals' lives everywhere — including farms, laboratories and the wild. Ultimately, she hopes her research will show humans why animals merit better treatment. "Our concepts of what makes somebody an individual worthy of protection are not very expansive and lead to people being exploited, or animals," Ashooh told Seven Days. "Animals are already telling us, where we see them around us, how smart they are, and we just refuse to acknowledge it." She was drawn to animals at a young age, influenced by her mother, who she said has an affinity for all creatures. Ashooh also participated in 4-H, showing dairy cows at fairs in the summer. "There was no other kind of reality when I was very young other than that animals are just other kinds of people," she said. "That's how I was raised to see them, and I did see them as neighbors or beings that I was cohabitating with." In college, she's conducted field research involving macaque monkeys in Puerto Rico and worked closely with African grey parrots at the Parrot Cognition Lab in Cambridge, Mass. Thirty-two Rhodes Scholarships are awarded each year. Ashooh, 21, hopes the recognition, and her research, will help elevate the study of animal welfare. "There is phenomenal scholarship, with sophisticated ideas about how we can better treat one another and animals," she said. "I don't think people are being given space to work on that in a serious way in academic institutions." The original print version of this article was headlined "Animal Instinct" …