Thanks to the continuing generosity of fellow retirees, the WSURA Scholarship Committee is now able to make three $1,500 awards to outstanding students who can claim a WSU retiree as a relative. Gary Pacernick chairs the Scholarship Committee, with Larry Prochaska and Mary Kenton serving as members. The committee meets in June to review the applications and make our selections. For the last several years we have had excellent pools of applicants and making selections has been hard. The three recipients for this year are Rosa Tweed, Helena Jenkins and Lee Huntsberger.
This is the third year that WSURA has helped to support Rosa Tweed. In fact, many people reading this article will have received a letter from her encouraging contributions to the Nick Davis Fund. Rosa is a fifth year double major in Biological Science and Printmaking. She plans to work as a wildlife biologist. She has taken advantage of every opportunity to hone her skills and make herself employable doing what she loves best. She travelled to Poland last year on a science expedition and this year, thanks to a generous financial aid package, she will be able to spend 21 days in Costa Rica surveying everything from environmental agriculture to cloud forests. Naturally, she’s busily studying Spanish.
Rosa also stays busy as an artist. This past summer she won the City of Fairborn’s Banner Contest. The point was to create an original design that celebrated the connection between Wright State University and the City Fairborn over the last 50 years. She comments: “I am still amazed to see my banners hanging on the light poles of Colonel Glenn Highway and North Fairfield Road!”
Sophomore Helena Jenkins, a double major in English and Women and Gender Studies, is another Nick Davis recipient. Helena loves the supportive learning environment she experiences at Wright State. Her favorite course this semester is Fiction Writing, which she believes is vastly improving her prose style.
Helena’s grandfather was the late Jeff Vernooy, the long-time and much-beloved director of the Office of Disability Services. Like Rosa, Helena is “incredibly grateful” for the financial support she’s been given. She sees it as an opportunity to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps. She volunteered this fall for the Breaking Silences Conference, hosted by ODS, because it “was an amazing opportunity to work with people who knew him.”
Our third recipient is Lee Curtis Huntsberger, another dual major. Lee is combining international studies and classics. The connecting interest is linguistics, with a minor in Chinese. Lee is a Dayton native who graduated from the Dayton Stem School. Both his parents are respiratory therapists. At Wright State he has been an active member of Sigma Phi Epsilon, serving on both the Interfraternity Council and the Fraternity Sorority Council. His community service activities are Big Brothers /Big Sisters of Dayton and Raiderthon.
WSURA is proud to assist these three outstanding students. Thanks to the ongoing generosity of the Wright State community, the Nick Davis Fund is very close to being fully endowed.
