Previous Winners

Extended Deadline for 2010 Scholarship Applications: April 16 2010

These past winners were all students who showed unusual initiative and creativity in solving problems.

Their innovations were in fields ranging from art to computing to sports.

The scholarship program welcomes applicants who demonstrate creativity in any field.

Past Winners

Heather Marie Allen (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.

Stephen Ross Bukowsky (The Morgan School, Clinton) pioneered new designs for pulse jet engines.

Anjali Deshmukh (East Lyme High School) knew 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.

Arthur Philip Dutra (O.H. Platt High School, Meriden) designed and built the world's first holonomic or omni-directional-drive robot using VEX components.

Noting that his community seemed largely oblivious to the history that had shaped it, Peter Eason (Fairfield Prep) brought the past alive in his hometown by researching, taking photographs for, writing, and publishing a small book that made it easy for residents and visitors to take an informative historical walking tour. He donated funds raised by the sale of the book to the local historical society.

Gregory Michael Fisher (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 (Branford High School) created photographs of abandoned industrial buildings that encourage New Englanders to look at the legacies of their industrial past in fresh ways.

Whitney Dyshaun Kelley (Co-Op High School, 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.

Aerim Kim (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.

Hugo Lara (East Haven High School) 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 (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.

Concerned about the negative effects of bullying on students from elementary school to high school, Dana Lovallo (RHAM High School, Hebron) made an innovative video that helped spark constructive community conversations about bullying locally and around the state.

Troubled by watching fellow teenagers in his community succumb to despair and defeat in the face of the violence and poverty that surrounded them, Jonathan Moreno (Bridgeport High) wrote, composed and recorded an album of Christian rap songs designed to inspire them to recognize both their vulnerability and their potential, to reject anger, and to strive to achieve positive goals. Sales of the recording raised money for his church.

Tara Marie Moriarty (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.

Danielle Patrice Myers (Hartford High School) created, produced, and directed a distinctive stage production about Black history and culture.

Rachel Kauder Nalebuff (Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford) 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. New York Times article on Rachel Nalebuff's project

Charles Gordon Nathanson (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 (Jonathan Law High School, Milford) creatively explored connections between poetry, philosophy, and science.

Mark Adam Schneider (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 Ăllan in an original play and novel. He will use his scholarship at Yale University.

Realizing that many students couldn't even locate major countries on the map, Marybeth Tamborra (Norwich Free Academy) organized ground-breaking activities to spread knowledge of world geography.

Colin Theys (Amity Regional High School, Woodbridge) 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 (The Hopkins School, New Haven), came up with an innovative way of addressing the problem of senior citizens' wariness of computers; the program he created, Surfing USA, helped senior citizens at Woodbridge Senior Center learn to navigate the information superhighway.

Mansur Iskanderovitch Tokmouline (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.

Angeline Marie Ucci (East Hampton High and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts) channelled personal emotional challenges into a series of paintings that creatively rework familiar paintings by famous artists into commentaries on contemporary culture.

Jenny R. Urfer (Newtown High School) developed a set of innovative and successful strategies for teaching pottery skills to the blind.

Lily Yeung (Danbury High) 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.

 

The Renee 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.