Deserving Students on the Money

Valley College students, faculty, family and donors assembled in Monarch Hall Thursday for the Annual Scholarship and Awards Night ceremony.

"This is a great afternoon and a great event and we are so pleased to see all of you, both our donors and scholarship recipients," said Valley President Tyree Wieder during her opening speech. "This is one of the best days of the year for the campus. My other favorite, of course, is commencement."

Don Guathier, Academic Senate president, addressed the honorees in slightly different language.

"There's a famous ketchup company that's working on perfecting a tomato, and in some ways that's what we're doing here, we're perfecting all you tomatoes," he said, "so that you can go out into the world and really be the best."

The event, sponsored by the Associated Student Union, Student Services and the LAVC Foundation, attracted approximately 300 hundred people. The Foundation awarded 106 scholarships, adding up to $130,000, an increase from $110,000 in 2007.

Before the awards were handed out, the audience was introduced to the vocal ranges of Patricio Castillo, who won a Showcase award for his vocal performances. The Showcase award recognizes student achievement in the performing and visual arts.

Other Showcase award recipients were Atticus McKittrick for instrumental music, and Alyssa Carter and Emily Lehrer for theater arts.

As students lined up after the performances to receive their scholarships, it was evident that Eboni Haynes, an African American studies and political science major, was the big winner of the night, taking home five awards.

"It feels wonderful, that's the only thing I can say at this point, and I'm tired," she said as she waited in line at the end of the program to collect her scholarships. "This just really …gives me a nice send off to my next step."

Her next step is either UCLA or UC Berkeley, but first she will use half of the money to "pay [her] credit cards, and the other half [she will] put in the bank, nothing too crazy."

Other big winners included, Hasmik Tadevosyan, Tracee Porter, and Lisa Sandino, each with four scholarships.

The highlight of the night came at the end of the event when English Department Chair Alfred Zucker presented students Derreck Bourdon and Prince Prabhakar with Phi Theta Kappa All-California Academic Team Awards. Fifty students are selected for this award each year by the state legislature and Gov. Schwarzenegger.

It was also announced that while Prabhakar received the award in Sacramento earlier this year, he was accepted to medical school right from junior college.

"It was exhilarating; my heart was pounding the entire way up there, of course," said Prabhakar as he sat with his family at the end of the program. I didn't realize [Zucker] was actually going to make a speech about it,"

Raul Castillo, executive director of the LAVC Foundation was pleased with the event.

"It so great to see so many students receiving scholarships," he said. "I'm an alumni of Valley College, and I applied for six scholarships back in my time and I got nothing… And I always encourage those who didn't receive a scholarship, and did apply … to keep doing it."