OIA senior receives Murray State's Presidential Fellowship scholarship

Apr. 25—On Monday, Owensboro Public Schools announced Michael Gray, senior at the Owensboro Innovation Academy, has been awarded a Presidential Fellowship scholarship at Murray State University.

According to a press release, students selected for the Presidential Fellowship scholarship must complete a "rigorous multi-step application process" which includes multiple in-person interviews.

Incoming first-year students who have a 28 ACT composite score or a minimum 1300 SAT verbal and math combined score, along with a 3.7 GPA on a 4.0 scale, are eligible to apply.

The scholarship covers the cost of tuition, on-campus housing at a double-occupancy rate and a meal plan, while recipients of the scholarship are responsible for conducting extensive research projects and serving as leaders in the campus community.

Gray, 18, is happy he secured a full ride to further his education and be at a place that is familiar to him.

His sister, former OIA student Katie Gray, received the same scholarship from Murray State in 2021. Gray and his sister are the only two OIA students to receive the scholarship.

"I know all the faculty at Murray," he said. "... I'm excited to stay with the faculty I know.

"(It is) a very good engineering program."

"Our presidential fellows are all outstanding academic achievers, but they are also selected based on their demonstrated leadership potential and involvement in their communities," said Dr. Warren Edminster, executive director of Murray State University's Honors College.

Gray looks to use his time at Murray to discover where he wants to end up career-wise.

"I don't know if I'm gonna finish undergrad with an electrical engineering degree and go straight into electrical engineering," he said, "or if I'm gonna take the fact that I'm also on the advanced physics track at Murray and go get my physics Ph.D and then start doing probably condensed matter research if I go that route."

But he knows that he will learn about something he truly enjoys.

"I've always been curious ... and I always have to ask: 'Why do things happen?' " he said. "I used to lean more towards the animal side of things like: 'How do things evolve? How do things adapt in their environment?' "

When he arrived at OIA a few years ago, Gray thought he would have gotten into zoology, but that changed when he took a physics class his freshman year with former teacher Allen Hunley.

"I loved that class to no end," Gray said. "... Up to that point, math was just kind of a thing that I had to do; and (then) I took physics and all of the sudden ... math is like a tool we get to use to explain how the world works.

"I got the tool and all of the sudden I was seeing the nails everywhere and started hitting 'em in."

By his junior year, Gray said he started taking full-time courses at Kentucky Wesleyan College, where he took general physics under the direction of Dr. John Sinclair, assistant professor and program coordinator of physics.

"(He) was a condensed matter physicist before he taught, so he was able to talk about kind of what he researched on," Gray said. "... I'm in mechanics with him right now, and I'm loving that class — it's all the things I could ever want. I get to explain why things happen, I get to predict how they happen. I get to use all this math I've been learning and building up into something useful."

Gray also feels good about continuing his family's legacy at Murray.

"It is nice to kind of step up to the plate (and) follow in the footsteps that were placed in front of me," he said. "In the words of (Isaac) Newton: 'If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.'

"My family's been able to help me a lot getting to this point."

And while his time as a high school student will come to a close in a few weeks, Gray plans to stay busy before making his way out to Murray.

"The only thing I'm doing over the summer is I'm actually doing a research project with Dr. Sinclair. We're fixing an x-ray machine, basically. It's going to be very fun," he said. "I'm also trying to get resources together for future robotics teams. I'm making some tutorial videos myself (on) general coding stuff, and I might do a little bit of building."

But Gray won't forget his time in high school anytime soon.

"I don't think I would have traded it for anything," he said. "I had some very good friends getting me through it all and family getting me through it all."