APS Selects 27 as 2001-2002 Minority Scholarship Recipients

The APS has awarded Corporate Minority Scholarships to 27 students who are majoring or planning to major in physics. Since its inception in 1980, the program has helped more than 290 minority students pursue physics degrees. Nineteen new scholars and eight renewal scholars were selected. Each new scholarship consists of $2,000, which may be renewed once, and each renewal scholarship consists of $3,000.

Corporate scholar Julian Holder, a student at Poly Prep in Brooklyn, New York, was drawn to physics through a childhood fascination with how mechanical devices such as airplanes worked, stimulated by frequent visits to local airports and science museums. He struggled initially in his advanced placement physics course, but persevered and went on to score the highest possible grade on the national AP physics exam, and plans on making physics research a full-time career. Holder further fostered his interest in research by spending two summers at Temple University’s School of Medicine, and last summer was a student intern in the Clinic Psychopharmacology Section at NIDA (part of the National Institutes of Health), in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition, he is an avid jazz fan and trumpet player, as well as a gifted athlete.

A childhood interest in methods of communication developed into a fascination with digital communication and the promise of quantum computing for Corporate Scholar Isamaria Hopkins of the Beaumont School in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. She has been an avid science student, and helped found her high school’s math and science club, which now regularly participates in science competitions. She is equally active in the drama program, working behind the scenes at most school theatrical productions and writing her own plays for performance. She also volunteers for a variety of community service, including tutoring dyslexic children at a local hospital. Her participation in such non-scientific activities has given Hopkins an appreciation for their value, and also influenced her choice of fields, desiring one “whose scope is not limited to the scientific community and whose purpose is not limited to furthering itself.”

The APS scholarship program operates under the auspices of the APS Committee on Minorities in Physics, and is supported by funds allocated from the APS Campaign for Physics. Scholarships are awarded to African-American, Hispanic American and Native American students who are high school seniors, college freshmen or sophomores. The selection committee especially encourages applications from students enrolled in institutions with historically Black, Hispanic or Native American enrollment. After being selected, each scholar is matched with an accomplished physicist to act as a mentor. For applications for the 2001-2002 competition, contact Arlene Modeste Knowles at knowles@aps.org. Information can be found at http://www.aps.org/programs/minorities/index.cfm.