Gifted students receive honors

Straight A’s. Perfect SAT scores. A record number of Advanced Placement courses. Countless scholarships, awards and state competition placements.

The achievements of the high school seniors nominated this year by the Spokane Scholars Foundation read like a guide to academic perfection.

On Monday night, those accomplishments took center stage as 126 teens received medals of academic achievement. Twenty-four took home even bigger prizes – grants ranging from $1,000 to $4,000.

“It was surreal,” said Andrew Lawson of North Central High School, recipient of the $4,000 grant in fine arts. Described Monday as “the most artistically gifted student to ever attend his school,” Lawson plans to attend Spokane Falls Community College next year.

“This will pay for all that and take a load off my parents’ shoulders,” he said after the event.

The banquet marked the 16th annual awards ceremony for the Spokane Scholars Foundation, a volunteer organization that raises scholarship money through donations from Spokane businesses and individuals. School banners hung from the Spokane Convention Center ballroom as students, teachers and community members dined and more than $60,000 in grants were doled out.

The grant money comes “no strings attached” – students can put it toward tuition, computers or anything else they need, said board member and Shadle Park High math teacher JoAnn Tripp.

Honored students included Ruth Ryan, a Gonzaga Preparatory School senior with perfect scores on the critical reading portion of the SAT and the SAT II Spanish exam. Ryan also scored perfectly on the ACT reading exam and the AP Spanish exam. An aspiring doctor, Ryan crammed seven courses into her six-period day during her junior and senior years.

Ryan seemed at home onstage Monday with the 23 other scholars. Perfect test scores were the norm, not the exception.

Ryan’s scores complemented fellow scholar Jacob Erb’s perfect scores on the math portions of the SAT, which he took as a sophomore. The Mead High School student placed first regionally and third statewide in the Washington mathematic competition in 2006 and 2007.

Scholars came from schools all around Spokane, including Gonzaga Prep and St. George’s School.

St. George’s student Molly Ostheller won the $4,000 grant for social studies.

Ostheller’s achievements include perfect scores on the AP U.S history, world history and English tests. She volunteers at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Cultures and spends her summer studying at universities around the country, including Harvard.

Ostheller wasn’t the only scholar with a Harvard connection. Lewis and Clark senior Mark Hay, recipient of the $4,000 grant in English, studied there one summer. The Columbia University-bound scholar was described as someone who “embodies what it means to be a scholar.” Hay co-produces two programs for KYRS radio and scored a perfect 800 on the reading portion of the SAT as well as a perfect score on the AP English test.

“He is, simply put, brilliant,” the counselor continued.

That word could also be an apt description for Benjamin Schwyn of Ferris High. A recipient of the $4,000 grant in science, Schwyn scored nearly perfect on the AP physics test and received A’s in each science class he’s taken. His achievements earned him a scholarship to the Colorado School of Mines, where he will study chemical engineering.

According to his biography read Monday, a science teacher described Schwyn as “truly the most gifted science student I have ever had the joy to teach.”

Some colleges and universities will match the scholar grants given out Monday, said Louis Rukavina, president of the Spokane Scholars Foundation.