Excerpt from The Extension
By Mary Kenton
The Wright State University Retirees Association has established an endowed fund for scholarship awards to Wright State students. The endowment was named in honor of the late Nicholas Davis, a long-time university employee who was director of continuing education at Wright State's Kettering Center. WSURA Nick Davis Endowed Scholarships are available to continuing full-time undergraduate students with a minimum GPA of 3.0, with first preference given to an applicant who is a relative of a WSU retiree. In 2018, the association awarded four students scholarships of $1,500 each.
This is the third year we have supported Rosa Tweed, daughter of Maureen Tweed, who is on a six-year program to earn a B.S. in Biological Sciences and a B.F.A. in Printmaking. She will finish up biology in the spring and printmaking in the fall of 2019. During the summer she worked for Five Rivers MetroParks, serving as a conservation intern, doing everything from removing invasive Calley Pear to analyzing deer camera data for the annual bow hunts. She also worked with Dr. Tom Rooney on an undergraduate research project that focused on moth biodiversity at his research sites near Boulder, Wisc.
She collected moths at night and assisted in the collection of spiders during the day. The trip also featured a porcupine sighting, finding wolf scat on a trail and interacting with owls. Currently she is working to identify her moth samples and analyzing their numbers, as moth biodiversity offers clues about how well the ecosystem is doing as a whole.
Rosa is extremely grateful for our help. “It is impossible to describe the relief of receiving a financial aid award,” Rosa observes. Without the financial aid she receives, she would not have been able to pursue both degrees without taking on crippling debt. After graduation she plans to pay it forward by contributing to scholarships herself.
For the first time, WSURA is supporting twins, Meghan Jenkins and Helena Jenkins. They are the granddaughters of the late Jeff Vernooy. Meghan is a junior with a double major in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Public Health. She works in a lab on campus looking at the interactions between viruses and bacteria when they infect cells at the same time. She presented her work at a conference in Mexico and won an award for her poster. She has been interested in infectious diseases since Science Olympiad in 7th grade. She also credits her grandfather for supporting her interest in science. “My experience at Wright State has been amazing,” she says, “and the classes and research have prepared me really well for my future.”
Helena is a sophomore with—you guessed it—a double major in English and Women and Gender studies. She finds her current classes very enjoyable. She thinks her Introduction to Fiction Writing class is improving her prose style immensely. Helena loves “learning in the supportive atmosphere Wright State provides.” She is grateful for the financial support that allowed her to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps. She concludes, “I was able to volunteer this year for the Breaking Silences conference and it was an amazing opportunity to work with people who knew him.”
The fourth Nick Davis recipient is Adam Al-masri, Jim Hughes’ grandson, who is a junior in the University Honors Program majoring in Political Science and minoring in Finance. He plans to pursue an M.B..A with a concentration in Finance and Investment Banking. One day he hopes to help manage an investment portfolio for a mutual fund that will enable ordinary citizens to save for retirement and achieve financial security. “I will forever be grateful to the institution of Wright State University and the intellectually stimulating professors who truly make it what it is,” he writes. “Every day, it is an honor to walk the halls that my mother and grandfather have walked before me. I have no words to convey my gratitude for being granted this wonderful scholarship.”
The Nick Davis Endowed Scholarship Fund is just a few thousand dollars short of being fully endowed. Please contribute as generously as you can when you get that letter or phone call. As you can see above, the students WSURA helps to fund are terrific. Their appreciation and their commitment to Wright State are heartening and refreshing. It is a privilege to help them along.
