Two local seniors named National Male and Female Leaders of the Year
Awards/honors
▪ A Paul Laurence Dunbar High School senior, Zsombor Gal, and a Henry Clay High School senior, Anne Boggess, have been named the 2017 National Male and Female Youth Leaders of the Year at a banquet held in St. Louis and sponsored by the National Council on Youth Leadership and Washington University. Morgan Rehm, a senior at Scott County High School, received the James E. McLeod Insightful Leadership Award.
As part of the local Youth Salute program, all three seniors won an all-expense-paid trip from Holifield Photography to the National Council on Youth Leadership Conference in St. Louis.
Zsombor, son of Jozsef Gal and Emese Galne Farkas, and Anne, daughter of Scott and Julie Boggess, each received $1,000 scholarships from the national council, which is the parent organization for U.S. Youth Salute programs. In May, Zsombor was named 2017 Lexington Youth Leader of the Year by the Central Kentucky Council on Youth Leadership and won a $500 scholarship in an awards ceremony at Transylvania University.
▪ Emily Cook of Lexington has been named homecoming queen as part of Murray State University’s festivities Oct. 26-28. Cook is a junior studying animal and equine science and was nominated by the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. Cook is co-captain of the Racer Girls Murray State University Dance Team and a member of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. She is also involved with the Kentucky Academy of Science, Gamma Beta Phi Honors Fraternity and Best Buddies. Emily is the daughter of Ellie and Scott Cook of Lexington.
▪ Zachary Stone, a senior economics and statistics major from Winchester, has received the Kyle J. Thacker Memorial Scholarship at Eastern Kentucky University. The scholarship rewards outstanding junior and senior economics majors at Eastern and honors the memory of Kyle J. Thacker, a 2012 economics graduate from Somerset who was killed in an 2013 accident.
▪ Four students from the Kentucky State University computer science program — Gigi Barnett, Cory May, Brandon Rogers and Derek Roberts — have earned first-place overall at the IBM HBCU Watson Hackathon in Atlanta.
According to Frank A. Richardson, assistant professor of computer science at KSU, this was the first time KSU sent a team to compete.
“The teams were presented with a programming challenge and were given 30 hours to complete a solution,” he said. “Solutions were evaluated on elegance, practicality and value.”
▪ Transylvania University has received $800,000 to apply digital technology to a liberal arts curriculum by expanding digital tools in classrooms and laboratories and by training faculty and students to incorporate digital teaching and learning into courses and scholarly activities. The university will also hire a full-time digital content specialist with expertise in instructional technology.
The Bingham Fund for Excellence in Teaching at Transylvania University has awarded two grants totaling $800,000 as part of the Transylvania Initiative for Digital Technology, Research and Creativity.
This initiative comes as Transylvania prepares to open its Carpenter Academic Center. The building will integrate cutting-edge technologies, such as Mondopad collaborative touchscreens. Professors Kerri Hauman and Tim Polashek serve as co-directors of the Digital Liberal Arts Initiative, which received the grants.
▪ Lafayette High School’s Pride of the Bluegrass earned the top marks in the Kentucky Music Educators Association’s 2017 Class 5A marching band championship in Louisville recently, recording the school’s 19th state title. The 210-member band is directed by Chuck Smith.
Lafayette’s last championships in the competition came in 2013 and 2012. Dunbar, which has earned seven state titles, last won in 2011 and 2010.
▪ Frontier Nursing University, a graduate school educating nurse-midwives and nurse practitioners, hosted its 2017 commencement ceremony Oct. 21 in Hyden. Over the past year, more than 600 nurse-midwives and nurse practitioners from almost every state have completed a distance-education program. The ceremony included a video presentation of the awarding of an honorary doctorate degree to philanthropists Barbara and Donald Jonas, who founded the Jonas Center for Nursing Excellence.
Frontier produces about a third of the certified nurse-midwives in the United States. For the 2016-17 graduation year, nearly 40 percent of the more than 600 graduates completed the nurse-midwifery program.
▪ Union College has inducted four new members into its Hall of Fame:
Christopher Stunson, Class of 2008, a principal at Bristow Elementary in Bowling Green, received the Rising Star Award.
Kristal Doolin Class of 1996, 2002, 2006, the district technology integration specialist for Corbin Independent Schools, named Kentucky Teacher of the Year in 2013, was inducted into the Educator Hall of Fame.
Stephen Rhodes, Class of 1979, Commercial Bank regional market executive for Barbourville and Corbin, was inducted into the Business and Professional Hall of Fame.
Judge Paul Isaacs, Class of 1966, circuit judge for Kentucky’s 14th Judicial District, received the Distinguished Alumni Service Award.
Nominations can be made at Unionky.edu/nominate.
Miscellaneous
▪ The League of Women Voters of Lexington is sponsoring an essay contest for Fayette County high school students, asking them to write an op-ed on the following: Given that the first amendment of our Constitution protects freedom of speech and the press, is there any way to avoid the influence of distorted or false reports? In these contentious political times, how do you evaluate the information that comes your way? What sources do you feel you can trust and why?
The contest is open to students in grades 9-12. Private school and home-schooled students are also eligible. The deadline is Dec. 8.
Prizes of $250 for first place, $150 for second and $100 for third will be awarded in January. There also will be a $100 recognition of ESL writing. An honorarium will be awarded to the winning students’ teachers/sponsors.
Learn more by emailing Judy Johnson at Lexington.lwvessaycontest@gmail.com or by visiting Lwvlexington.com.
This story was originally published November 7, 2017 at 5:55 AM with the headline "Two local seniors named National Male and Female Leaders of the Year."