We are approaching the time of the year when seniors at the Highlands School are making decisions about furthering their education. Also at this time, community organizations will be preparing to award scholarships at the Highlands School Honors Day in mid-May.
The town will again award town scholarships to all graduating seniors who will enroll in a college, university, community college, or technical school. Our endowed town scholarship program is now well over 50 years old, and the endowment stands now at over 1.2 million dollars. The enthusiastic community participation and generous contributions at events like the golf tournament and fly-fishing festival increase the funds available for scholarships.
Our scholarship program is not a one-and-done program. If a student is pursuing a degree or certification and is enrolled in a school, they can apply for continued support. Early in January, I signed scholarship checks for the spring semester. These checks are sent to the institutions where students attend to pay for tuition, books, and fees.
As I signed the checks, I took notes. Let me report where our scholarship recipients are attending school. It is an outstanding record for both the students and their alma mater, the Highlands School.
This semester, we have 3 students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 4 at UNC Charlotte, 2 at North Carolina State University, and 7 students attending Western Carolina University. But the list does not stop at just state universities.
There is one student at the University of Mississippi at Oxford, 1 at LSU, 1 at Kentucky, and 1 at Georgia Southern. If that were not enough, 1 student is at Life University, 1 at Methodist University, and 1 at San Jose State in California.
We have 4 students enrolled at Southwestern Community College, 1 at North Georgia Tech, and 1 at Tri-County Technical College. These students will leave these schools with certificates and licenses that will enable them to pursue very lucrative vocations.
All the scholarship checks I signed were for $1,000 or more. I know a few seniors in the upcoming graduating class have already been accepted to UNC and other schools. The scholarship recipients are indicative of the Highlands K-12 School; the little school produces outstanding students.
It is a school the community should be proud of and support with additional funding and resources.
Some might ask why the town scholarship program is limited to just Highlands School graduates. The answer is that this is how the scholarship’s creators, people like Jack Taylor, set up the program decades ago. The scholarship program was designed for local students at the Highlands School. For the town to administer the scholarship program, special state legislation had to be secured. That enabling legislation included specific requirements, such as the one cited above, for administering the scholarship funds.
As we enter the graduation season, I hope residents will continue to support our graduating students by contributing to the town scholarship program or to other scholarships offered by businesses and the nonprofit community. For further information on how to donate to the town scholarship fund, please call Rebecca Shuler, the Town of Highlands Finance Director, at (828) 526-2118.
