The Journey
A newsletter for chapter advisors, chapter officers, and regional officers.

Aim for the Top!
By Mike Watson

Community college students are in the winner’s circle more than ever before these days - especially in terms of winning prestigious scholarships!

One by one, the barriers that once separated community college students from higher education’s most prestigious scholarships are breaking down.

Formerly relegated to second-place in the educational arena when compared to their peers who enrolled in four-year institutions as freshmen, community college students have paid their dues. Our students who transfer to baccalaureate-degree institutions are not just holding their own in comparison to the non-transfers, they are outperforming them in the classroom, as campus leaders and as community servants!

This recognition is long overdue, but it has definitely arrived, and nowhere is this more evident than through the prestigious scholarships that community college students and community college transfer students have received.

Ten years ago, Cristina Pianezzola, a community college student from Utah Valley State College, a Phi Theta Kappa member and a Society international officer, achieved a breakthrough for community college students by being named a Truman Scholar.

Four years ago, Maureen Dunne, a Phi Theta Kappa member from the College of DuPage in Illinois, became the first community college student to be named a Rhodes Scholar. Last year another Phi Theta Kappa member, Wes Moore, a graduate of Valley Forge Military College in Pennsylvania, was also named a Rhodes Scholar.

“Membership in Phi Theta Kappa definitely nurtured my desire to be a leader and helped me develop the self-confidence, discipline and intellectual curiosity needed to be a successful transfer student and compete for major scholarships,” explained Moore during a recent interview in Washington D.C., where he is serving as a White House Intern. “Ironically, I probably would not be a Rhodes Scholar today if I hadn’t first been a two-year college student and a leader in Phi Theta Kappa,” he added.

Two years ago, the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation established a new scholarship exclusively for two-year college students that annually awards as many as 400 scholarships of $1,000 each.

And just last month, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation announced their newest recipients of Undergraduate Scholarships, prestigious awards of up to $30,000 each, to students beginning their junior years. Thirty-nine community college students - 32 of them Phi Theta Kappa members - won these outstanding awards, which are the nation’s most generous scholarships available to community college students seeking baccalaureate degrees.

All in all, these scholarship opportunities are sending a clear message to community college students: You are the best, so aim for the best scholarships. Accept nothing less than the best!

“The judges are seeking students who have the total package-scholarship, leadership and service-and that’s what I developed through my involvement in Phi Theta Kappa,” explained Stephanie Griffith, a Phi Theta Kappa alumna at Tulsa Community College in Oklahoma, who received a prestigious Morris Udall Scholarship in 2000.

“I hesitated in applying. At first, I feared the competition from students attending universities like Princeton and Harvard would be too stiff. After winning and meeting the other recipients, I realized that I actually had more varied academic, service and leadership experiences than many juniors and seniors at four-year institutions,” Griffith said.

When you are evaluating scholarships, don’t sell yourself short because you didn’t spend four years in the Ivy League. Find out about the Rhodes Scholarships ... Wilson Fellowships ... Cooke Scholarships ... Truman Scholarships. Many of these programs will have a representative on your campus - if not, the vast resources of the Internet make scholarship information more accessible to the individual student than ever before.

Rhodes Scholars Moore and Dunne, and Truman Scholar Pianezzola, have all agreed that their two-year college experience more than adequately prepared them for their baccalaureate studies and subsequent scholarship opportunities - viewpoints strongly endorsed by the current community college Cooke Scholars.

“Two-year college students need to know that they have more opportunities than they think they do, and that once they give themselves a chance they’ll amaze themselves,” said Ron Crouch, recently named a Cooke Scholarship winner.

“When I was first approached with the idea of applying for big scholarships, I thought I had a better chance of getting hit by a meteor than winning one! How does a student from a small community college win the kind of big, prestigious scholarships that only students from big, prestigious universities seem to get?” said Crouch, who attends Prince George’s County Community College in Maryland.

“Despite my doubts, my advisors in the school, including my Phi Theta Kappa advisor, pushed me to try,” Crouch continued. “If my story has a moral to it, it is this: two-year college students are just as likely to find funding as four-year students, and if you are a member of Phi Theta Kappa - you already have a foot in the door,” concluded the future George Washington University student.

So what are you waiting for? There is a whole world of prestigious scholarships out there - and you are a contender for them all. There are no limits - unless you limit yourself!

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This page last modified -- Friday, 14-Nov-2003 11:00:25 CST (cwe)