Morgantown students named U.S. presidential scholars
Jun. 20—One recipient isn't ruling out plans for entrepreneurship in high-tech—while the other is waiting to see where both hemispheres of his brain will transport him, in two distinctly different fields of study.
Meet Alice Guo and Luke Watson, West Virginia's U.S. Presidential Scholar recipients for 2022.
Guo, who enters Stanford this fall, just graduated from Morgantown High School.
Watson, an incoming freshman at the University of Virginia, recently turned his tassel at University High.
The students from Morgantown are the only two from the Mountain State to be named to the far-flung program, with emphasis on "far-flung."
Those wishing to be considered—all 4, 000 or so top achievers—represented 50 U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia and Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
Students enrolled at U.S. Department of Defense schools abroad could also qualify for the scholarship, which considered both academics and altruism, when it came time for a final selection.
The same goes for students who were enrolled in career technical education programs while in high school.
A total of 164 students from the above field achieved the honor, including the two from West Virginia.
Guo will study computer science at Stanford, in the heart of Silicon Valley. She wants to do research as she considers business opportunities in the industry that's changing everything.
At the University of Virginia, her crosstown classmate Watson will explore the cerebral. With a dual major of physics and music, he'll delve into just what the brain can do, when it is called to perform in both the lab and concert hall.
Presidential scholars over the years have gone on to become corporate presidents and poet laureates.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, meanwhile, said he was impressed that the class of candidates were all able to highly perform in the unprecedented days of the pandemic—which disrupted the bulk of their high school years.
"Throughout one of the most trying periods in our nation's history, " the secretary said, "our students have once again demonstrated their strength and that they have so much to contribute to our country."
President Lyndon Johnson had the same hopes on a balmy evening in June 1964 when he ushered the inaugural class of scholars into East Room of the While House.
"You are younger than most of the Earth's quarrels and you are older than most of the Earth's governments, " the president said.
"This is your challenge, " he continued, "to give your talents and your time in our land and in all lands to cleaning away the blight, to sweeping away the shoddiness, to wiping away the injustices and the inequities of the past."
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