What comes to mind when one thinks of highly competitive scholarships: unrealistically perfect students from perfect Ivy League universities with perfect GPAs?
Well, not anymore.
Destenie Nock, a senior double-major studying electrical engineering and applied mathematics, is a winner of the George J. Mitchell Scholarship and is now the first student from an HBCU to receive the scholarship.
“Up until the call, I was freaking out all day, counting how long it had been since the lastinterview,” said Nock.
Now that she has won the Mitchell Scholarship, she will spend a year earning a master’s degree in sustainable electrical energy systems at Queens University of Belfast in Northern Ireland.
Nock is one of only 12 scholars to receive the award. Over 300 universities nominated students for the scholarship, which was then narrowed to 36, then 20, finally down to 12.
Winners of this year’s competition include students from Cornell, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke, and Stanford. ¬
Anna Whiteside, A&T’s Honors Program scholarship and fellowship coordinator, worked with Nock throughout the application process.
Whiteside explained that Nock worked on her essay for six months. “When it is that high level of competition, and all they are going to see is that 500 word essay, those have to be 500 of the best words you could pick out in the best order,” Whiteside said.
Whiteside advises that grades are important, but so is leadership.
“Destenie has been very creative in leadership opportunities,” said Whiteside.
After traveling to Malawi, Africa in the summer of 2012 to teach math and how to sew reusable feminine products aimed at helping girls stay in school, Nock realized her passion for electrical engineering.
Nock said after seeing how a lack of power could hurt a person’s education, she became serious with helping developing nations progress their power grid infrastructure.
According to Whiteside, in only the last 20 years have non Ivy League schools seen big name scholarships as a real possibility for their students.
“It takes someone who is going to be confident enough to not let the fact that they are from a school that is not an Ivy League, but still a great school, keep them down,” Whiteside said.
She sees the Ivy League misconception ending at A&T one scholarship at a time because students like Nock and last year’s Goldwater and Fulbright Scholarship winners, Nadine Jansen and Emmanuel Johnson, put in so much effort to succeed.
Nock plans to get her doctorate at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to become a university professor.
Her research will focus on how to make any power grid more reliable, as well as how to enhance the power grid infrastructure in developing nations.
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- ZIRIS SAVAGE Register Reporter