Foundation honors outstanding student scholars

There weren’t enough superlatives to go around for the Spokane Scholars Foundation’s annual high school academic awards Thursday night.

Several award recipients were described in written comments by teachers as the best students in the teachers’ careers. And several young scholars were honored in more than one of the six categories in which the foundation gave cash awards to the top four candidates.

East Valley High School senior Julia Riegel was one such winner. First in science, second in social studies and a finalist in English. And not yet 15 years old.

A professor at Eastern Washington University, where Riegel entered the Running Start program at age 13, said she outperformed almost all the college students in her class – and was “also a very nice person.”

“Wow! And I work with rocket scientists,” said Dr. Jack Bacon, a systems integration engineer for NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the keynote speaker for Thursday’s program.

One of Riegel’s social studies instructors described her as “one of the best writers ever.”

Similar praise was showered on University High School’s Zachary Brown, who was first in both English and mathematics. Summarizing comments from Brown’s teachers, foundation President Louis Rukavina called Brown “a splendid musician” as well as a computer consultant for the city of Spokane Valley.

First-place winners received $3,000 grants, and Riegel plans to use hers at Gonzaga University this fall. She said she is thinking about majoring in both physics and music performance. She is a viola player.

“I’m still a little shocked,” she said. “It’s a great night.”

Second-place winners got $2,000; third place received $1,500 and fourth place carried $1,000.

A number of universities will match the grants, effectively doubling the awards, Rukavina said.

He described Thursday’s finalists – about 24 in each of six categories – as “the absolute cream of the Spokane intellectual crop.”

Bacon described them as part of a generation that may expect to visit the moons of other planets, but also one that must bridge the gap between the world’s industrialized societies and tribal cultures whose frustrations can be expected to fuel more terrorist violence.

“Amazing, miraculous things are going on, and the generation that we are about to send through these doors is going to do great things,” Bacon predicted.