Honor Society announced the Undergraduate Achiever 2019 Scholarship Recipients in April 2019. Five recipients were chosen for the $2,000 Undergraduate Achiever Scholarship. Each of these students have excelled in some area of their undergraduate-level academic careers or personal lives.
The Undergraduate Achiever Scholarship is one of many scholarships offered by the Honor Society Foundation. Scholarship recipients are glad they joined Honor Society in order to take advantage of the year-round scholarship opportunities!
My name is Denisse Hernandez, and I am about to transfer to Cal State Long Beach for Fall 2019 with a Studio Arts AA-T Degree. I have always considered myself an artist and a visual storyteller. I work in multiple media, primary making drawings, paintings, digital illustrations, and web comics, but my ultimate passion is animation. I was born and raised in Mexico, where the industry of animation is not very developed and most universities do not have animation as a major. Such lack of opportunities and the determination to pursue my desired career were what brought me to the US. I came in 2014 with the goal of getting a bachelor’s degree in Animation, but being unfamiliar with the education system in this country and speaking no English made my path to college long and difficult. After taking English classes at an adult school, getting my high school diploma, and a certificate in multimedia design for video production, I finally enrolled in East Los Angeles College, where I have attended since 2016, keeping a GPA of 4.0 and a place in the Dean’s Honor List every semester. This scholarship means a lot to me because ever since I moved to the US, money has been the biggest obstacle that has prevented me from moving forward on my education; I have had to give up great school opportunities and postpone my transfering only because of the lack of economic resources. I am very grateful with Honor Society for choosing me as a recipient of this award, which I plan to use to pay for the tuition of my first semester at university.
I just finished my first year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I chose Madison because it always felt like home. I started the year wanting to major in international business and finance, yet after taking an economics course, I soon realized that the business school was not the right fit. Since then, I have switched ideas and am currently undecided about a major and pursuing certificates (minor) in Criminal Justice and Computer Science. There are so many amazing opportunities that I’m finding it a lot more difficult to choose between classes than I originally thought. This past year, I continued my studies in Spanish and German from high school, however, this upcoming fall I decided to try a new language this. I am able to attend classes that were never an option in high school. For example, my favorite classes so far were Astronomy and Criminal Justice, two things I would have never guessed to be as interesting or complex as they were. That’s the amazing thing about college, the hardest part is choosing between the thousands of classes to take. All it takes is one class to spark a new interest. This year has been an absolute blast due to the many friends I met throughout the year. I met most of my friends through the extracurriculars at Madison. My favorite sport in high school was Track and Field and luckily I was able to continue running at Madison. I ran for the executive board at the end of the fall semester and I was honored to become the new Vice President of Women’s Sprints and Field for the Wisconsin Track Club. I have dreamed of attending law school ever since middle school when I saw Legally Blonde and became a chapter member of the Phi Alpha Delta Pre-Law Fraternity, International. I also joined the Asian American Student Union and Chinese American Student Association as a general member to increase my involvement with the university and meet others with the same interests and culture. However, one of my proudest accomplishments this year was founding and establishing a new service club at the university named Khaleesi Service Club (KSC) with some of my closest friends. Our new club is dedicated to serving women, children, and families both locally and internationally. This fall we will finally begin expanding our members and working for the community.
As a delegate to the upcoming Congress of Future Medical Leaders, I look forward to learning more about CRISPR and the repair of infested DNA and mutated human embryos from Nobel Laureates and world-changing researchers, futurists, and technologists. This Congress, which is by nomination only, honors America’s brightest high school students who are likely to become future medical Leaders. People have often doubted my capacity to achieve my academic goals, but I don’t let it bother me. This spring, at the age of 13, I will graduate from Sage Oak High School with a 4.89 GPA. I will simultaneously graduate from Los Angeles Mission College with an Associate’s of Arts and a 3.71 GPA. I set my bar high, and I have the drive and determination that many students lack. Sometimes, my peers call me weird, but I do not let their raised eyebrows stop me from achieving exceptional grades and leadership. My record proves that I have the grit and tenacity needed to excel at UCI as both an undergraduate and medical student. My goal is to graduate with a BS/MD and work alongside other medical researchers in cutting-edge research.
Persistence is a trait I practice in sports, not just academics. This past April, my team SMOED won the most significant competition in the cheer community called Worlds. Because I was the youngest of twenty-two on my competitive cheerleading squad, I could tell that my teammates questioned my ability to handle the pressure and keep pace with them. It took 20-25 hours a week of practice and years of mastering the hardest passes, but I finally proved my worth when the team won gold. Balancing my athletic pursuits with my academic ones wasn’t easy, but it taught me to manage my time and earn the respect of my peers, coaches, and professors. Integrity is another driving characteristic of my life. Technology like CRISPR is fraught with ethical questions, and the field of medicine demands honesty and compassion. I know that if I want to find long-term solutions to genetic diseases, I must first be fully committed to helping others. For this reason, I regularly tutor students in my community who are struggling in school. I have a clean record at my high school and community college, and I will continue to make choices fitting of a leader who wants to save lives through the research.
My name is Cassidy Kennedy and I am just finishing my freshman year at Eastern Washington University this spring. My college experience has been pretty smooth sailing so far. I’m a member of the EWU Fastpitch team and plan to be for my four years here. I’m planning to declare as a Business and Marketing Secondary Education double major. I have chosen this path because it has a backup plan built into it. As of right now after graduation I plan to enter the education field, and teach high school business and be a DECA advisor. The best part about the double major is that if I decide I don’t want to teach anymore, or at all, I will have a Business Administration degree and I could enter the business field. The Undergraduate Achiever Scholarship will truly help me achieve my educational goals. My parents are helping me pay for school, but being the oldest of three, the funds only stretch so far. This scholarship will contribute to my educational and career goals immensely, and I am truly grateful for the opportunity to pursue those goals.
My name is Logan Feld and I am currently enrolled at Missouri University of Science and Technology (S&T). I have just completed my Freshman year in aerospace engineering with a 4.0 GPA and am on course to graduate with my Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering in a total of nine semesters. While on campus, I maintained an active presence within the university, attending many of the student open forums to discuss policy changes with the UM system leaders and making many like-minded friends along the way through my various courses and extracurricular activities. I devoted much of my downtime to the Mars Rover Design Team at S&T where I am an active member on the ground support systems subteam. Within the subteam, I worked specifically on the DriveCam system and the mast mount. The DriveCam is a gimbal attached to the main mast of the rover that allows a small camera to rotate with two degrees of freedom for manual driving purposes. The mast mount system is the clamping system that ensures that the main mast on the rover stays attached to the chassis without any fear of rotating or translating up or down. All the parts for my systems and the systems done by other people are designed by the team with CAD software and is then 3D printed or manufactured at the Design Center. It can be a lot of work, but it is worth it to see the final product drive around. The Undergraduate Achiever Scholarship I received through the Honor Society could not mean any more to me as it opens many doors for me in my future academic career. With the money from this scholarship, I will be able to pursue my Master of Science at S&T without any financial burden on my family. As a consequence, I will be able to follow my dream of commercializing space travel and exploring our universe, ensuring mankind can live among the stars. My biggest thanks to the Honor Society for this wonderful opportunity!
