2007 Winners
Arthur Philip Dutra of Meriden (O.H. Platt High School) designed and built the world's first holonomic or omni-directional-drive robot using VEX components
Aerim Kim of Riverside (Greenwich High School) assisted North Korean refugees and increased student awareness of the problems faced by refugees around the world by creating a Refugee Aid Club in her school.
Rachel Kauder Nalebuff of New Haven (Choate Rosemary Hall) compiled a collection of "first period narratives" from women around the world into a book that will help illuminate, with empathy, humor and insight, a usually invisible aspect of women's lived experience.
Mansur Iskanderovitch Tokmouline of New Fairfield (New Fairfield High School) addressed the problem of how to help minors who have committed misdemeanors get back on track by devising a plan to create a Juvenile Review Board in his town.
2006 Winners
Danielle Patrice Myers of Hartford created, produced, and directed a distinctive stage production about Black history and culture.
Realizing that many students couldn't even locate major countries on the map, Marybeth Tamborra of Salem organized ground-breaking activities to spread knowledge of world geography.
Lily Yeung of Danbury responded to the genocide in Darfur by conceiving and helping to produce a short documentary that became an effective means of combating apathy and ignorance.
2005 Winners
Stephen Ross Bukowsky, from the Morgan School in Clinton, pioneered new designs for pulse jet engines.
Gregory Michael Fisher, from South Windsor High School, created a summer soccer program for pre-schoolers as an innovative way of supporting his local food bank.
Sean Dolan Hildebrandt from Branford High created photographs of abandoned industrial buildings that encourage New Englanders to look at the legacies of their industrial past in fresh ways.
Tara Marie Moriarty, from New Fairfield High School, created an organization that transformed the social experience of children in Special Education in her school by integrating them with peers in a range of activities outside the classroom.
Charles Gordon Nathanson, from Hamden High, expanded the science and math offerings for top students at his high school by developing a curriculum and teaching two advanced courses himself.
Edward Joseph Quish, from Jonathan Law High School in Milford, creatively explored connections between poetry, philosophy, and science.
Jenny R. Urfer, of Newtown High School, developed a set of innovative and successful strategies for teaching pottery skills to the blind.
Previous Winners
(2004 & 2003)
Heather Marie Allen, a graduate of Somers High School, knew from first-hand experience how difficult it was for hospitalized children to write and draw comfortably in bed. She creatively improved the lives of hospitalized children by designing and producing special stainless steel lap easels that make it easier for bedridden children to draw and write. She will use her scholarship at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
 | Anjali Deshmukh, a senior at East Lyme High School who plans to attend Dartmouth College, felt that her classmates could do more to help victims of floods, earthquakes, and mudslides abroad and poverty and bigotry at home. She devised a range of creative strategies to mobilize her classmates to become more engaged in supporting world disaster-relief efforts and in fighting bigotry in their school and community. |
Whitney Dyshaun Kelley, a graduate of Co-Op High School in New Haven, used imagination and enterprise to meet the challenge of making New Haven's program in Leadership, Education, and Athletics in Partnership (LEAP) more responsive to the needs of the young people it serves by developing the program's Youth Council. She also engaged as a poet some of the same social issues she addressed in her work with urban youth. She will use her scholarship at Temple University.
Hugo Lara, a senior at East Haven High School who plans to attend Middlebury College, was disturbed that his community held negative stereotypes of artists as self-centered and unconcerned about the world around them, and that the arts were not encouraged in his town. He countered that stereotype and the place of the arts in East Haven by creating a club called STATE of the Arts--Students Taking Action Through Expressive Arts, which turned an abandoned storefront in downtown East Haven into a vibrant gallery and performance space for young artists. He also created Art with a Heart, a program to deliver one hundred art kits to children in third world countries where war and poverty have disrupted their education.
| Erica LeCount, a junior at Bunnell High School (Stratford), was troubled by the fact that many local minority children whose families count not afford a conventional sports camp missed the chance to play soccer, the sport she loved. So she created the Kick Start Youth Soccer Clinic for these children, motivating varsity soccer players at three high schools to donate their services, and persuading local businesses to donate funds. |  |
Mark Adam Schneider, a graduate of South Windsor High School, ingeniously mapped the spread of the West Nile Virus through computer simulation of its progress. He also brought history to life with imagination and élan in an original play and novel. He will use his scholarship at Yale University.
 | Colin Theys, a senior at Amity Regional High School (Woodbridge) who plans to attend Wesleyan University, turned his personal fascination with creating imaginative, compelling 3D computer graphics into an internet-based international network of artists that pioneered in sharing new experimental techniques and applications. He brings an inventive, creative spirit to a range of endeavors from animation to rocketry. |
| Vadim Tsipenyuk, a senior at The Hopkins School (New Haven), who plans to attend Yale University, came up with an innovative way of addressing the problem of senior citizens' wariness of computers; the program he created, called Surfing USA helped senior citizens at Woodbridge Senior Center learn to navigate the information superhighway. |  |
The Renée B. Fisher Foundation congratulates all of these students for their innovative solutions to individual and community problems, and for demonstrating their creativity in a broad range of fields.
Thank you for your interest in our scholarship.
