Penn State Football: John Urschel Named A National Football Foundation And College Hall of Fame Scholar-Athlete

Penn State’s John Urschel has been given one of the most prestigious honors that a football student-athlete can earn for performance on the field and in the classroom.

The Nittany Lions’ guard was named one of the 16 National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame Scholar-Athletes, presented by Fidelity Investments, from across all NCAA and NAIA divisions.

Urschel will receive an $18,000 scholarship for post-graduate studies. He also is a finalist for the William V. Campbell Trophy, endowed by HealthSouth, presented to the nation’s premier college football scholar-athlete, with the winner receiving $25,000 for post-graduate work.

With the announcement Thursday, Urschel marks the 17th Nittany Lion to be selected a Hall of Fame Scholar-Athlete and follows another standout offensive lineman and first-team Academic All-American, Stefen Wisniewski (2010).

Penn State is tied with Notre Dame for third in the nation with its 17 Scholar-Athlete recipients. Nebraska (22) and Ohio State (20) are the only schools with more honorees than Penn State.

“I am extremely grateful for the honor of being named a National Football Foundation Scholar-Athlete,” Urschel said. “I am proud to represent both my team and university in a positive manner, and thank my professors, coaches, teammates and family for the support and guidance in my years as a Penn State student-athlete. I take great pride in excelling in the classroom and on the field and I look forward to meeting all the recipients in December.” 

Urschel earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics over the past four years. Urschel taught a section of Math 041 — Trigonometry and Analytic Geometry — during Penn State’s spring 2013 semester. He is teaching a section of Math 232 –_Integral Vector Calculus — this semester. 

A paper written by Urschel titled, “Instabilities of the Sun-Jupiter-Asteroid Three Body Problem” was published in 2012 in the journal, Celestial Mechanics and Dynamic Astronomy. He has a second paper accepted for publication, “A Space-Time Multigrid Method for the Numerical Valuation of Barrier Options” in the journal, Communications in Mathematical Finance.

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