The National Honor Society announced $2 million in scholarships for students nationwide on Monday, and one of the finalists to receive its biggest award is from West Virginia.
The National Honor Society announced $2 million in scholarships for students nationwide on Monday, and one of the finalists to receive its biggest award is from West Virginia.
Colin Street is a senior at Morgantown High School and one of twenty nationwide finalists for a $25,000 scholarship.
Street has done advocacy and organizing work for both the American Legion’s Boys State, where he has served as a senator representing West Virginia in mock-Senate programs, and is a co-founder of his school’s Sexuality and Gender Acceptance Initiative, which has worked with the ACLU to provide gender-affirming care to transgender youth.
“We’re looking to obtain a 501(c)(3) status through the IRS and get incorporated with the state of West Virginia,” Street said. “But right now we’re just focusing on building a solid base in our community.”
According to a 2017 study by UCLA, it was estimated that West Virginia has the most per capita transgender youth in the country at just over one percent.
He’s also done work as president and a coach for Mountaineer Area Robotics, a local robotics team.
Street is planning on studying environmental science and public policy in college, and said he’d like to use that knowledge to give back to his home state.
“North Central West Virginia and the state at large, these are the people and communities that built me into the person I am today,” Street said. “And I want to make sure I can give back and provide those opportunities that I had and more to the future generations of West Virginia.”
Street will be honored in Washington, DC as part of the National Honor Society’s leadership week next month, where the national winner will be recognized. As a finalist, he has already earned more than $5,625 in scholarship money.
Two semi-finalists were also announced by the National Honor Society: Meredith Romanek, from Wheeling and Jenna Tuttle from Berkeley Springs. As semi-finalists, they earned $3,200 in scholarship money.
West Virginia’s State Treasurer's office launched a scholarship sweepstakes Wednesday for children 14 and younger in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the state’s SMART529 savings plan.
West Virginia’s State Treasurer’s office launched a scholarship sweepstakes Wednesday for children 14 and younger in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the state’s SMART529 savings plan.
Contestants will be eligible to win one of three scholarships, each worth $20,000. The scholarships will be awarded to the randomly chosen winners once a month from October through December.
The original SMART529 plan began in 2002 to help West Virginians create college education savings plans through the treasurer’s office. More than 37,000 accounts exist today.
Entries must be completed by a parent or guardian, and both caretaker and child must be West Virginia residents. Only one entry per child is allowed, but multiple children in a household can be entered.
More information on the contest, including registration, is available on the State Treasury website.
Three seniors from Calhoun Middle High School have been awarded the inaugural “Go Scholarship” from the 1982 Foundation.
Three seniors from Calhoun Middle High School have been awarded the inaugural “Go Scholarship” from the 1982 Foundation.
Savannah Cunnington, Lexi Gregory and Allison Stevens will each receive up to $60,000 over four years of undergraduate studies for academic expenses and work study opportunities.
The 1982 Foundation was created by Calhoun County native Crystal Mersh. who’s now CEO of Quality Executive Partners, Inc. Mersh created the foundation, in part, to restore the Calhoun County High School building in Grantsville.
The foundation’s name references Mersh’s year of graduation from Calhoun County High School.
In a press release, Mersh said “the intention of the GO Scholarship is to allow Calhoun County to Grow Our Own STEM talent and to foster opportunities for employment right here at home.”
Scholarship recipients will also be invited to attend the QxP annual leadership meeting hosted by the foundation’s top 50 leaders globally. This event occurs each year in November at The Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs.
West Virginia’s athletic department said Monday it will commit $1.5 million annually in education-related benefits starting this fall for its scholarship athletes.
West Virginia’s athletic department said Monday it will commit $1.5 million annually in education-related benefits starting this fall for its scholarship athletes.
WVU athletes will have the chance to receive the assistance based on their academic achievement and progress toward graduation, the department said in a news release.
Last fall the Big 12 announced it would allow its member schools to decide the amount of education-related benefits athletes can be given in an academic year following a U.S. Supreme Court decision over the summer.
The court ruling came in a case brought by former athletes, including West Virginia football player Shawne Alston. It barred the NCAA from preventing schools from offering additional education-related benefits to Division I football and basketball players. That left it up to individual conferences to set limits if they choose. The Big 12 set $5,980 as a benefits ceiling.
West Virginia will make payments on an annual basis after one year if an athlete is academically eligible and has a satisfactory student conduct record. The athlete cannot be in the transfer portal at the time of payment, the school said.
“Our student-athletes work extremely hard to succeed in the classroom and sometimes those efforts are overshadowed by what’s happening in competition,” athletics director Shane Lyons said. “Based on the Supreme Court ruling, the Mountaineer Academic Incentive Program now gives us the opportunity to enhance the student-athlete experience, which is paramount in our department.”
Lyons said WVU hopes to supplement that program in the future through fundraising efforts.
Space Camp is the stuff of childhood legend, and two West Virginia students will have the opportunity to attend this summer thanks to a new scholarship.
Space Camp is the stuff of childhood legend, and two West Virginia students will have the opportunity to attend this summer thanks to a new scholarship.
The program, hosted at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama gives more than 40,000 students a year, from around the world, unique opportunities to explore science and engineering hands-on.
But when rocket center board member, and West Virginia native, Homer Hickam looked around, he noticed something was missing from the camp.
“I was very disappointed to see that there were very, very few West Virginia students taking advantage of Space Camp,” Hickam said. “I saw less than 100 West Virginia students coming to space camp this past summer.”
Hickam is best known for his first memoir, “The Rocket Boys,” and its subsequent film adaptation “October Sky.” As a once-burgeoning rocket engineer from the coal fields of southern West Virginia, he has a unique understanding of the opportunity Space Camp represents to students in the state.
“If there had been a Space Camp, and I would have been able to attend it, I can’t even even imagine how wonderful that would have been,” Hickam said. “Space Camp is a great opportunity not only for the education that you get, but for the people that you meet. It really broadens the horizons of students meeting their peers from around the country and around the world.”
Given how close West Virginia is to Huntsville relative to the rest of the country, Hickam was distressed so few students were taking advantage of the program. With the release of his latest memoir titled “Don’t Blow Yourself Up” this past fall, Hickam saw an opportunity to remedy the issue. He partnered for a reading tour with the West Virginia-based and family-owned Adams Hallmark chain of stores
Using proceeds from the sales of the book in Adams Hallmark’s seven locations, Hickam and the Adams family set up a scholarship to send West Virginia students to Space Camp.
It’s a project that Andrea Underwood says perfectly honors the legacy of her father and company founder Mike Adams who passed away in October.
“Dad was a coal camp kid,” she said. “Dad would be just excited that his legacy is letting other kids who are from West Virginia have this opportunity to expand their horizons and, and go see new things and do things that he never had the opportunity to do.”
It’s an opportunity 12-year-old scholarship recipient Xander Dennison of Exchange, WV has been looking forward to for a while.
“I’m wanting to go because I’ve always had an interest in aviation and aerospace ever since I was maybe three and I’ve tried to keep that dream ever since and this just made that dream even better,” he said.
Dennison is one of two recipients of the inaugural scholarship, the first exclusively to help West Virginia students attend Space Camp.
“I was reading it, and I saw that it said I gotten the scholarship and honestly I kind of danced because I was always happy and surprised,” he said.
Dennison’s mother, Amber, said the $1500 scholarship to cover the camp’s cost will make a big difference.
“It’s so hard to give him the opportunities because we just don’t have a lot of that stuff around and then the cost that you know accumulates,” she said. “So not having to have that stress of worrying about the camp now we can focus on getting him there letting him enjoy camp to his fullest potential.”
As far as summer camps go, Space Camp is one of the most exciting and coveted experiences. But Hickam hopes it encourages young West Virginians to join the ranks of mountaineers that came before them in the field of aerospace.
“West Virginia has a long history of folks from the Mountain State working in the aerospace industry, not only me, but folks like Chuck Yeager,” he said. “The first CEO of Space Camp was Ed Buckbee, who was a Shepherdstown, West Virginia native.”
Hickam and the Adams family hope this scholarship inspires another generation of Mountaineers to reach for the stars.
Last week, Davis and Elkins College graduated its first class of students that includes members of its touring string band and dance ensemble. The Appalachian Ensemble works a lot like a college sports team- the players, in this case musicians and flatfoot dancers, earn scholarships.
One of the graduates is 22-year-old banjo player, Kaia Kater, who was recently featured by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the 10 New Country Artists You Need to Know.
The other graduate is 24-year old Scotty Leach, who plays fiddle and piano. Five years ago, he was living in Centralia, Washington. He played in a local contra dance band, and he loved it. But he didn’t feel content. “I didn’t have a plan to go to school, and I remember thinking one day, I was sitting in the house I was renting, and I felt like I was headed in a downward spiral, like my life had no purpose or meaning or direction or anything. And I thought…this is bad.”
So then, a very strange thing happened. The president of a small liberal arts college in West Virginia visited and invited Scotty to attend his school — with a scholarship. He was one of three performers Gerry Milnes and Buck Smith recruited to Davis and Elkins College for the first year of the Appalachian Ensemble program, in 2012.
Kaia Kater came from Canada. She and Scotty brought very different styles to the program. A third student named Rebecca Wudarski- who ended up leaving the college after a few years- was the only native West Virginian in the band that first year.
The first time they ever played together as a band was in Thomas in 2012. A crowd gathered around the three young musicians as they played an informal jam.
“Even through the anxiety of like are we gonna get along as friends, I think that moment was really when musically we were gonna be ok,” said Kaia.
Their sophomore year, a new group of dance students started at D&E. In addition to West Virginia tunes, the string band learned new music that would showcase the dance students.
Credit Mountain Stage
/
Scotty Leach is a fiddle player for the Appalachian Ensemble
Scotty says he thinks the program will continue to grow and adapt.
“I’m curious what this will be like in ten years. You know, after several cycles of students are have gone through it, I’m curious what the repertoire looks like. We have some Duke Ellington now. Gerry would have never let us do Duke Ellington the first year.”
Gerry Milnes retired a year after Scotty and Kaia started at D&E.
As an folklorist of a different generation, he says the break from traditional old time music was something that was tough for him get used to.
“Things move along and things change, and even traditional music changes, it’s never been really static, it’s changed through time, and it’s never gonna change, so I have to realize that it’s a new generation and a new time, and I have to understand that.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMOYkrmQYU
And the Ensemble’s style of fusion Appalachian music has helped bring a lot of attention to D&E. Four years later, the program has grown. There are now 13 students in the Appalachian Ensemble. The college invests in the program in the same way that other schools do for athletic teams.
Scholarships average about $7,000 per year, though the amount varies for each student.
The students tour across Appalachia, performing at schools and festivals. It hasn’t been cheap for the college, which has fewer than 900 students enrolled.
The Chair of Division of Fine and Performing Arts, Tom Hackman, says the Ensemble has helped the college do more outreach and branding. “I don’t want to say that it’s paid for itself, but it’s been worth it from the college’s standpoint. It’s something unique, and a lot of small liberal arts colleges, we have to embrace our uniqueness. We have to look at, you know, these are things that we do that are different from everyone else. And a lot of people here on campus recognized very early on that that was the case with the Appalachian Ensemble, that no one was doing something exactly like this.”
As for Scotty and Kaia, they both say they have a lot of bittersweet emotions this week- after they played their very last performance as D&E musicians.
Credit courtesty Kaia Kater
/
Kaia Kater
This summer, Scotty will be staying in West Virginia to work at the Augusta Heritage Center. After August- he’s not sure what his plans will be.
Kaia Kater will be touring in Canada and the United States to promote her new solo album, Nine Pin. On the sleeve of the CD, Kaia says: “Thank you to Scotty Leach, we’ve been everywhere and back again.”
