When Emily Angell was a little girl, she used to tell her grandfather not to worry about his Parkinson’s disease—she was going to make him better.
Today, that’s still the plan. On her application for the UWAA’s Legacy Scholarship, under “Career Goals,” Emily wrote: “Going to medical school or graduate school in the biological sciences and working as a doctor to find a cure or effective treatment for Parkinson’s disease.”
She’s off to a strong start, with membership in a pre-med honor society, a science-heavy schedule, and a 3.54 GPA going into her junior year. And she did win one of two 2005 legacy scholarships.
The benefits of belonging to the UW Alumni Association are various and well publicized (see box below). Members may not realize how their dues benefit others—deserving students like Emily Angell, whose financial burden would be $2,500 heavier this year were it not for her scholarship. Now in its second year, the program is open exclusively to “legacies,” the children and grandchildren of UWAA members.
Angell wasn’t sure about coming to the UW at first. Her older sister, Elizabeth, ’01, had been an academic superstar at the school, matriculating at age 15 through the Early Entrance Program and ultimately winning a Rhodes Scholarship (see “Rarified Air,” March 2004). “Everybody knew who she was,” says Angell. She worried about following in such formidable footsteps.
But she visited during Greek Weekend and came away convinced that she could create an identity for herself at such a big, diverse and welcoming place. Now she’s here and thriving, serving as vice-president of her sorority and doing volunteer work for breast-cancer research and awareness. She’s also getting to know more about her family, she says, than she ever would have if she’d gone someplace else. She just recently learned, for example, that her grandparents met at a UW fraternity function.
“And they’ve been married for 58 years now,” she says. “It’s funny, because my boyfriend and I also met at a Greek social function. So we’re looking at each other and saying, ‘Wow, you never know.’ ”
Stacey McFerran, a junior majoring in business administration, was this year’s other UWAA Legacy Scholarship winner. Five UW undergraduates also received $500 awards. They are: Anna Earnest, Jeffrey Eaton, Maren Murphy, Jack Westphal and Jasmin Zavala.
The deadline for UWAA Legacy Scholarship applications is April 30, 2006. For more information, visit UWalum.com and visit Student info. To join the UWAA, visit Membership.