Outstanding Mercer Island High School seniors Holly Waggoner and Rose Guttman were awarded $5,000 college scholarships at the seventh annual Stanley Ann Dunham Scholarship Award ceremony on May 21.
Guest speaker Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng, who is the daughter of 1960 Mercer Island High School graduate Stanley Ann Dunham and President Barack Obama’s sister, presented the awards. Gov. Jay Inslee opened the program, addressing a full house at the Congregational Church on Mercer Island, and congratulated the five women finalists — Eliana Grosoff, Megan Lee, Piper Casey, Holly Waggoner and Rose Guttman.
Mercer Island is the place where Stanley Ann Dunham spent all four years of high school, getting a first-rate education, learning to think independently, and developing compassion for others. According to Soetoro-Ng, her mother’s time on Mercer Island made a lasting impression on Dunham.
“It gave her enough of a sense of community, spirituality and groundedness that she was brave enough to go off to Indonesia,” she said.
After taking her first anthropology class at the University of Washington, Dunham went on to become a renowned anthropologist working to improve the economic and social status of women and families in poor communities around the world.
The Stanley Ann Dunham Scholarship Fund annually recognizes those graduating female students who share Dunham’s values and goals of academic achievement, service and empowering women.
“My mother was very determined to be remembered for a life of service and thought that service was really the true measure of a life,” Soetoro-Ng said.
This year’s scholarship finalists volunteered to improve living conditions and opportunities in the areas of education, gender equality, homelessness and public health. Waggoner worked with an organization called PETRI helping to provide secondary education for girls in Kenya. She will be attending Santa Clara University in the fall.
Guttman worked at a hospital and volunteered on a farm in Guatemala through Global Visionaries. She also took classes through Running Start in addition to her courses at MIHS, and worked 16 hours a week at Starbucks. She plans to attend the University of Washington this fall.
For the second year, the Scholarship Fund also held an essay contest for University of Washington anthropology majors to connect Stanley Ann Dunham’s anthropology work in poor communities around the world to issues and areas of study that are relevant today. This year’s winner, Sumaya Mohamed, graduates from UW this spring and plans to work with vulnerable populations in global public health.
Soetoro-Ng, a professor of peace education and conflict resolution at the University of Hawaii, shares her mother’s passion for global citizenship and social justice. Prior to the awards ceremony, she gave the opening remarks at a Community Conversation panel discussion about stereotypes co-hosted by the Mercer Island Library’s Teen Advisory Council and the Stanley Ann Dunham Scholarship Fund. The panel was moderated by Mercer Island librarian Carrie Bowman, educator and social justice advocate Jackie DeLaCruz and 2015 Stanley Ann Dunham Scholar Naomi Moore.
Mercer Island Eyeworks, QFC, Homegrown, Cascade Frames, Mercer Island Florist, Beecher’s Cheese and the Mercer Island Community Fund were supporters of this year’s events.
To learn more about the scholarship and Stanley Dunham, go to http://stanleyanndunhamfund.org.
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