Congratulations to This Year’s Scholarship Winners!

The Manhattan Branch is pleased to announce the 2013-2014 scholarship winners. Each scholarship award is for $1,000. All winners are non-traditional students.

Meet A Two-Time KSU Scholarship Winner – Angel Alvarado 

The first 2013-2014 scholarship winner that you’re going to meet is Angel Alvarado. You may remember Angel from our April 2013 meeting because she was awarded one of our scholarships last year too. Angel is working toward a bachelor’s degree in construction science and management with minors in Spanish and business. She has an estimated graduation date of December 2016.

Angel was born in Mexico and moved with her family to the U.S. She lived in what she termed “a rough part of Wichita” and knew that she wanted more out of her life than those around her. She had dreams of becoming a professional in the construction industry. Angel and her husband both worked for the Kansas Department of Transportation, but after three years, she decided it was time to pursue her dream. With the support of her husband, they moved their four children to Westmoreland so she could attend K-State full-time. It was an adjustment for them, but one that’s been good. Angel says that as a parent, small town living has a lot more to offer her kids than the big city did. She sends her kids outdoors to play when they get underfoot and doesn’t worry about what might happen when they spend the night with a friend. The family moved into an older home that they’ve been renovating as time and money allows.

Her husband was able to maintain a position with KDOT, but as most young families, they struggle to make ends meet. Angel is very thankful for the financial support that AAUW has given her and knows that upon graduation, she’ll have a career that will make it all worthwhile.

Opportunities Keep Blooming for This Scholarship Winner – Emily Hess

Meet Emily Hess. She’s the second of our three KSU scholarship winners this year. Emily is currently a senior in elementary education with a concentration in science. She will begin her core coursework this fall and plans to graduate in May 2015. This will be her second degree from K-State having earned a degree in horticulture in 1997.

Emily grew up near St. Marys. Her mother was a homemaker and her father was a high school English, speech, and debate teacher. She met her future husband in high school and they were married while she was in college. In 1998, Emily and her husband moved to El Dorado for a few years where she was a stay-at-home mom to their two daughters. While there, she worked part-time in the children’s library and at the YMCA in the nursery and teaching toddler classes.

The family moved back to Manhattan in 2003 when she and her husband had the opportunity to fulfill their dream of being business owners and purchased Manhattan Floral. She also had the opportunity to put her degree to work. Several years later they realized that sometimes dreams need to be altered or changed completely and in 2010, they closed the business.

Her husband went to work helping manage his family’s ranch near Alma. Emily began substitute teaching at local schools and found that she really enjoyed the children and the structure of the school environment. She began to reconstruct her dreams for the future, taking courses at Highland Community College and eventually coming back to K-State to finish her degree.

The family will have only one income now that she is a full-time student. They live near Alma and Emily will be commuting 70 miles, round trip, four days a week. She is grateful to have received our scholarship which will be of great assistance to her and her family.

This Scholarship Winner Plans to Leave a Trace on Her Students – Shana L. Schmidt

Our final scholarship winner is Shana L. Schmidt. She is classified as a senior at K-State majoring in secondary education with an emphasis in English and Journalism. She’s also working on an English as a Second Language (ESL) endorsement.

Shana is originally from Texas and had planned to become a teacher early in her life, but marriage, family, and a move to Kansas put her on a different path. She took a position at a local bank which she kept until a month before her first child turned one. For the last fourteen years, Shana made a living operating a local collection business, working at home raising her two children.

Shana is a Leave No Trace trainer and in 2011, she agreed to take a day to teach Leave No Trace principles to several Girl Scout troops at Camp Daisy. The principles aim to educate kids about the outdoors and responsible use of public land. She stayed up all night gathering material and creating games to teach the seven principles. Her daughter and son both participated in scouting when they were young so they helped that night and the next day too. On their way home, her son exclaimed from the backseat “Mom, you should be a teacher. You are really good at it. I would love it if you were my teacher because you make it so fun.” His words of encouragement made all that work worthwhile and awakened her earlier interest in teaching.

With the added encouragement of her husband, who was deployed with the National Guard in Africa at the time, Shana made the decision to pick up her dream of teaching. She knows her return to college is imposing sacrifices on her family, but getting her degree will ultimately result in a steady paycheck and she’ll being doing a job that she loves!