Longtime KY Scholars executive director is retiring. What’s next for the program?
From kindergarten through his senior year, Aristófanes (Aris) Cedeño attended eight different schools, moving around his native Panama for his father’s career.
“You grow not attached to anybody, any place, anything like that,” he said. “That’s the first trajectory of my life.”
Instead of letting the constant resettling negatively impact his childhood, Cedeño said it influenced him positively in how he approached his life and career, specifically in his almost 33-year tenure with Kentucky’s Governor’s Scholars Program (GSP), the last eight as executive director and academic dean.
“That allows me to be flexible and adaptable, two things that I teach in the GSP as traits ... to be successful,” he said.
The program was founded in 1983 when Kentucky leaders were concerned that too many of the commonwealth’s best and brightest high school graduates were leaving to pursue opportunities in other states.
The governor’s office, Kentucky legislators and private business executives came together to financially create the summer residential program.
The mission of the program, which is offered without charge, is to enhance the next generation of Kentucky’s civic and economic leaders. Rising high school seniors attend their Governor’s Scholar session at one of three college campuses across Kentucky, with the campuses changing on a three-year cycle.
Notable GSP Alumni include current Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-KY, and PNC Senior Vice President Christen Boone.
At the end of the program’s 2024 sessions at Centre College, Morehead State University and Murray State University, Cedeño, 68, will retire from his role as executive director.
His time with the program began in 1992, a year after starting at the University of Louisville as an associate professor of Spanish literature. He said his love of learning drew him into the program’s values.
“The program provides that intellectual growth that people like me are looking for,” he said. “When I first applied, I liked it, like everybody else does. Every summer, you like it.”
Cedeño saw what the program had to offer as an environment for intellectual growth.
“It is looking at knowledge as the basis for life,” he said.
“What makes the program an extraordinary endeavor, which then made me want to stay with the program, is that combination of intellectual approach. There is no pressure, there are no grades, there are no academic credits. (It is) learning for the sake of learning.”
Years later, after becoming executive director, the University of Louisville nominated him for a national fellowship with the American Council on Education in Washington, D.C., to prepare him for administrative roles in higher education.
Following his fellowship, Cedeño would receive calls from search firms offering him jobs he could apply to in administrative roles, but he always found himself back in the commonwealth with the scholars program.
“I always applied, and I went for certain interviews, and I said, ‘Uh uh, I (will) stay with the governor’s scholars,’” he said.
Following the opening of his last campus a few weeks ago, Cedeño said there were a few tears shed at the end of the journey, but he always will “Move on.”
“If you know me, I live in the here and now,” he said. “I embrace every single aspect of the program from the beginning.”
He highlighted the program’s Friday talent shows as an example of embracing what the program was. It was an event that wasn’t required by faculty to attend, but he went to every show he could.
Cedeño said he even performed in the showcase, dancing when he was still able to. He brought his Spanish language class for a few performances and taught ballroom dancing as an extracurricular too.
“I engaged myself beyond the classroom in activities, so everybody knew me on the campus,” he said.
Price named to succeed Cedeño
Former Governor Scholar Jennifer Price did not have any classes with Cedeño but remembers taking some of his ballroom dancing classes for her extracurricular.
She would return to as a resident adviser in the 1990s with Cedeño as her campus director. After leaving Kentucky for her education, Price would come back to the program later while working as a psychology professor at Georgetown College, developing a close relationship with Cedeño as she moved up the program ranks into a campus director position for six years, and eventually academic dean.
“He has been an incredibly important mentor to me within the program, and then just professionally through the years as well,” she said.
Gov. Andy Beshear, a former Governor’s Scholar who had Cedeño as campus director in 1995, announced July 11 that Price would be succeeding Cedeño as the next executive director of the program.
“What makes this program special is the way it brings together gifted young people from across a very diverse state, offering students an opportunity to take intellectual risks in the context of a supportive community built on a foundation of mutual respect,” Price said.
“The GSP has meant so much to me, and I am deeply honored to serve in this new capacity.”
In Cedeño’s time with GSP, he had three main goals: to have all 120 counties in Kentucky represented in the program, acknowledge merit as the overriding principle of the selection process and to have three sites for the GSP each year.
“Modeling the motto of the state of Kentucky, ‘United we stand, divided we fall,’ has been an important factor in order to keep this program alive,” he said.
Price said her priority is to continue the legacy of the program while continuing to expand the reach of the program.
“We make an effort to make sure we have representation from all 120 counties in Kentucky, but, of course, there are some parts of the state where we discover every year that there are people who don’t know about us,” she said. “There are smart kids in every county in Kentucky and we really want to make sure that those opportunities are extended to all Kentucky high school rising seniors.”
Cedeño said, that while he lives firmly in the moment, his most important words for the future of the GSP are to continue building and rebuilding the relationships with the people of the Commonwealth and make them stronger while maintaining relationships with the GSP’s more than 37,000 alumni.
“We cannot just sit on our laurels and rest on our laurels that we have done a good job for 42 years and not tell new generations of parents ‘This is an opportunity for your kids,’” he said. “We cannot just rely on our information on the website, we need to go out and talk to the people because we need to build that trust for those parents.”
Cedeño joked that during the last gubernatorial election, he knew his retirement was on the horizon.
“I always said this: I will retire happily when I leave in the governor’s office one of our alumni,” he said.
The race was between Bashear and Daniel Cameron, who was also a governor’s scholar.
“I would’ve retired anyway with one of them!” he said.
Cedeño said he might stay in Kentucky, or maybe go back to Panama, but will need to do some thinking on what retirement has in store for him, continuing to reiterate his “here and now” mantra.
However, knowing what he would like to be remembered for does not require much contemplation.
“When I die, I want to be remembered as an educator,” he said. “Not as a teacher or as a professor.”
This story was originally published July 12, 2024 at 12:36 PM.
