Photo courtesy of Rotary Club of Dearborn
Adhering to social distancing during the pandemic, Dearborn Rotarians continue to meet weekly via a Zoom conference.
DEARBORN – The Rotary Club of Dearborn recently announced a total of more than $60,000 in scholarships awarded to 24 graduating high school seniors in Dearborn.
Scholarships are awarded in four, merit-based categories. Each award category is endowed by or honors a past Dearborn Rotarian, who recognized the importance of education and sought to pay their own success forward by helping outstanding youth with college expenses.
Award amounts range from $8,500 to $2,000 to be used for tuition, books and class fees. In the case of the Rowen Scholarship, the award can be used for expenses related to their vocational pursuit.
Receiving the Harry A. Sisson Scholarship of $8,500 is Alex Elamine of Fordson High School. In addition to an outstanding academic record, Elamine served as captain of Fordson’s swim, tennis and golf teams and volunteered his services to a variety of school and community organizations.
Sarah Bazzi of Dearborn High School and Sarah Gawlik of Divine Child High School are winners of the Hugh M. Archer Scholarship, established in the memory of the longtime Dearborn resident and Rotarian. In addition to founding the Spiratex Co. and many professional achievements, Archer served as president of the Rotary Club of Dearborn, Rotary District Governor, International Director, International General Secretary and International President in 1989-90.
The Past Presidents Scholarship, largely funded by former Edsel Ford High School principal and Dearborn Rotary Past President Robert Young, is awarded this year to four Dearborn Public School seniors who will attend a Michigan college or university. Scholarships recipients are Mary Zoulfikar of Fordson and Dearborn Center for Math, Science and Technology; Sanaa Awada, Fordson; Mallack Jallad, Fordson and Collegiate Academy; and Spencer Dickhudt, Dearborn High School and DCMST.
The largest scholarship category is the Otto Rowen Vocational Scholarships honoring the memory of former Rotarian, teacher and principal of Dearborn Public Schools. He established the trust fund that is administered by the Dearborn Rotary Foundation to provide scholarships for DSP students who are the best representatives in their vocational areas as recommended by their instructors.
The 17 winners of this year’s Rowen Vocational scholarships are Hussein Alakhrass, Information Technology, Michael Berry Career Center and Fordson; Anthony AlAziz, Computer Programming, MBCC and Dearborn High; Jeffrey Cottingham Jr., Allied Health Occupations, MBCC and Edsel Ford; Rawan Eid, Nursing, Henry Ford Early College — Health Sciences; Zahraa Elghoul, Computer Programming, MBCC and Fordson; Ali Elsayed and Linnea Harazem, Criminal Justice and Law Careers, MBCC and Fordson; Maryam Jaratli, Computer Programming, MBCC and Dearborn High; Mohamed Kayed, Allied Health Occupations, MBCC and Fordson; Anthony Marano, Wood Technology, Edsel Ford; Melania Medina, Allied Health Occupations, MBCC and Dearborn High; Alexa Monroy, Marketing, MBCC and Fordson; Ali Mourad, Culinary Arts, MBCC and Dearborn High; Abigail Murray, Accounting, Dearborn Collegiate Academy and Dearborn High; Manal Nasser, Allied Health Occupations, MBCC and Fordson; Fatmah Saleh, Accounting, MBCC and Fordson; and Jason Wood, Automotive/Welding Technology, Edsel Ford.
Since 1999, the Dearborn Rotary Foundation has awarded a total of more than $535,000 in scholarships in the different categories.
Chairing this year’s scholarship program was Dearborn Rotarian David Anderson, the club’s board director for vocational services. His duties included recruiting and appointing scholarship chairs, coordinators and liaisons for the scholarship programs and providing regular updates to the Dearborn Rotary Foundation, which administers the scholarship funds.
“It’s a team effort and big undertaking on everyone’s part. The scholarship chairs and their committees spent considerable time reviewing the applications, scoring and making the final selections,” Anderson said. “It’s also highly satisfying for all of us to realize how many outstanding students we have in Dearborn. Our winners are not only maintaining high academic standards, they’re demonstrating service and leadership as well.”
Eric Rader, 2019-2020 president of the Rotary Club of Dearborn, credited Dearborn Rotary past president Lee Hollmann with taking on the monumental task of organizing and documenting the club’s scholarship selection process.
“Lee also serves as a liaison for the Henry Ford College nursing scholarships selected by the HFC nursing department as well as Rotary’s Archer Veterans Scholarships at UM-Dearborn and at the 19th District Court,” Rader said. “These scholarship winners will be announced in the near future.”
Information about each of the Dearborn Rotary scholarships is available on the club’s website, www.DearbornRotary.org. Completed applications are due in mid-January of each year with committee selections finalized in March.
Founded in 1923, the Rotary Club of Dearborn is the city’s oldest service organization and is a proud member of Rotary International bringing 1.2 million members in over 34,000 individual clubs together to live the motto of “Service Above Self.”