newsminer.com

Four students from the Interior have been named among the 2008 Gates Millennium Scholarship’s 1,000 recipients.

Dara Wilson of Lathrop High School, Robin Congdon of West Valley High School and Nenana City School students Jay Bean and Heidi Kiunya were chosen from 13,000 applications nationwide. As Gates scholars, their tuition and living and other academic expenses will be covered.

Keith Sieg, Nenana School Learning Center Student Support Services coordinator, said both Bean and Kiunya are deserving of the scholarships and are notable students, not just in academics but outside of the classroom as well.

“The underclassmen look at Jay and Heidi as tremendous role models,” Sieg said.

Bean has been a student in the Nenana City School District since first grade and will attend the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the fall to study civil engineering.

“He is tremendously ambitious to succeed and build,” Sieg said.

Originally from Kwigillingok, Kiunya has been a resident of the living center and attending school in Nenana since her junior year. Sieg describes her as an outstanding person who is involved with student council and the basketball team. He also said she is more than willing to share her culture with her fellow students.

Kiunya will join Bean at UAF where she will study accounting. She said the scholarship has had a positive impact on her future academic plans. Before winning the scholarship, she wasn’t excited about college because she worried about how to finance her education, but now her outlook has changed.

Like Kiunya, Congdon transferred into a new school during her junior year and said winning has had a big effect on her academic future.

Congdon will also be starting at UAF in the fall and plans to be a nurse.

“For a long time, I didn’t want to be anything else but a nurse,” she said.

Because of her short time at West Valley, she said the hardest part of her application was finding a nominator and a recommender. The application requires the students to find two people who can attest to the students’ academic diligence and community participation. Sieg said nominators and recommenders have to know the student well because they need to write essays about the student.

Wilson is the only Interior Gates scholar who will be leaving the state for college. She will be studying music and political science at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. Wilson said the scholarship has given her the confidence to set higher academic goals.

“I was definitely dancing around the house when I found out I won,” Wilson said.

Her counselor, Judy Murphy, describes Wilson as a bright, talented, creative and open-minded individual.

“She’s pretty incredible,” Murphy said.

The scholarship program was created in 1999 by a $1 billion dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to provide higher educational opportunities for minority students. The scholarship is renewable through scholar’s undergraduate years, and it is possible to extend their scholarships through graduate and doctoral studies. Since its inception, the program has given more than $300 million dollars in scholarships.