The career paths of Sasha Anderson, Jae Choi and Randy Eastwood are certainly unique, but still representative of the 1,369 recipients of Northshore Scholarship Foundation grants since 1984.
Entering its 27th year of operation, the foundation will be able to offer 75 scholarships valued at $149,900 next spring to even more recipients, those 75 enrolling for academic year 2011-12. The numbers are down a little — perhaps a sign of the times — from the 83 grants awarded for the current school year at $160,900. Eleven of the foundation’s family memorial accounts will skip 2011 to be able to offer a more valuable scholarship in 2012.
A complete list of the scholarship offerings is posted to the foundation Web site at www.ns-scholarship.org. Printed copies will be available in the counseling centers at Woodinville, Inglemoor, Bothell high schools, the Secondary Academy for Success and the public information office at the Northshore School District headquarters in the North Creek Valley. The posting describes eligibility, criteria and scholarship purpose. Application forms are found only online and most applications are due Feb. 4, 2011.
Candidates need to be graduates of the four secondary schools in the Northshore School District or residents within the district who may be attending high schools elsewhere.
Financial aid offices at Cascadia Community College and University of Washington, Bothell will have information specific to scholarships offered by the foundation at those schools.
We now digress no longer from the three randomly selected foundation “poster-persons”:
• Anderson is a 2006 graduate of Bothell High who received a $1,750 scholarship from Northshore Rotary Club, one of three sponsors of the foundation. The Northshore club is credited with starting the foundation in 1984.
She is a recent graduate of Chapman University in the Los Angeles area and spent the past summer in Kenya helping student organizations in colleges there start clubs to provide micro-financing for those young, educated entrepreneurs hoping to start their own businesses in their city or village. She completed a triple major in political science, sociology and French.
Anderson is on her way to Mumbai, India (formerly Bombay), having been named the winner of a $25,000 one-year ambassadorial scholarship from Rotary International. She competed with other post-graduate candidates from throughout the Puget Sound area. She plans to “blog” frequently during her year at school in India’s capital of commerce and entertainment. She will attend University of Delhi. We will provide that blog access information later this fall.
• Choi graduated from Inglemoor High in 2008, the winner of a four-year Janet and Gordon Livengood Memorial Scholarship for students with financial needs, but who show great academic potential. He also qualified for the state-funded Washington Scholars program. His Livengood scholarship would cover fees and class expenses while the state covered tuition and living costs.
Now entering his junior year, Choi learned that the Washington Scholars program would no longer cover full tuition, noting a shortfall due to the rapidly increasing cost of tuition at the University of Washington (as well as all state four-year schools and two-year technical and community colleges). The $1,500 Livengood scholarship will close that gap.
In communicating to illustrate how important the Livengood scholarship had become, Choi wrote to the foundation that he was entering upper-division coursework in the department of chemical engineering, maintaining a 3.91 grade point average. He is president of the Korean Student Association on campus “and I hope to increase our involvement in our local community.” He grades math homework in “differential equations” as a work-study job.
Choi began to lose me when he elaborated on his coursework.
“I am also doing research and my current research interests include ‘heated-tip atomic force microscopy and dielectric spectroscopy of polymer films. My research professor has interest in nanotechnology and molecular engineering and the former mentions of my research interests are essentially analyzing the properties of various materials at the nano-meter level.”
• Eastwood will be remembered by Bothell-Kenmore Reporter readers as a former city councilman in Kenmore, as well as the city’s mayor for a time. He is presently enrolled in his second year of the leadership masters of business program at the University of Washington, Bothell graduate school. Upon being accepted in the graduate program more than a year ago, uniquely without an undergraduate degree, he applied for and received the $2,500 Jerry Wilmot Memorial Business Scholarship sponsored by the Woodinville Rotary Club.
The Rotarians had established a foundation account in Wilmot’s name in 1997 following his death from Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was still president of Molbak’s at the time. The scholarship is designed to encourage the growth and development of graduate-level students who demonstrate leadership qualities and are desirous of entering the field of business management — with strong interests in human resources and organizational behavior.
The scholarship was renewed this fall for Eastwood’s second year. The father of four — two of them teenagers — will be the first in his family to achieve a degree beyond high school. He is not contemplating a change of career. His interests in real estate, property development and investment will continue, he said, with an enhanced foundation built from two years of academic and practical experience gained in the UW-Bothell program.
John B. Hughes was owner-publisher of the Northshore Citizen from 1961 to 1988 and is active in local nonprofit organizations.
