Extra participation benefits student
The Gates Millennium Scholarship gives Tovar full ride through her Ph.D
Top left: Valentina Tovar poses with Akins Principal Brandi Hosack. Top center: Tovar poses with Austin Mayor Steve Adler and his wife Diane Land. Tovar had the opportu- nity to speak at his first State of the City address. Top right: Tovar poses with Akins High School’s namesake Dr. Charles Akins. Bottom left: Tovar poses with the president of the Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Mark Madrid. She received the Ronald McDonald Hacer Scholarship. Bottom center: Tovar poses with her Austin Youth Council Directors Dr. Chiquita Eugene and Erika Cooper. Bottom right: Tovar and other students await the President Obama’s speech with the city manager and the National League of Cities Convention Director. The Congressional City Conference took place in Washington D.C. from March 7-11.
May 27, 2015
For Valentina Tovar, hard work, dedication and involvement in multiple clubs and organizations have culminated in her receiving one of the most prestigious academic awards in the world: the Gates Millennium Scholarship.
The scholarship, which pays for the chosen student’s college education all the way up to a doctorate degree is only given to 1,000 students annually. The competition is fierce, so those chosen have to really make themselves stand out from the crowd.
Tovar intends to use the scholarship to it’s fullest extent.
“My main goal right now is, looking ten years from now, to get a Ph.D in Communication Administration or something of that sort just because I think it’d be really fun to work in the (school) district,” said Tovar.
Tovar’s teachers see a bright future ahead of her.
“She’s definitely going to go into some field where helping people is the main goal or purpose and she’s gonna work her tail off to get there,” AP Biology teacher Ethan Peters said. I can definitely expect that she’s gonna do something really substantial. I would not be surprised to see that at all.”
For Tovar, an extreme involvement in extracurricular activities and consistent achievement of near perfect grades helped her win the scholarship. Her activities include involvement in common school organizations such as Key Club, Student Council, National Honor Society and band. But they also include involvement in off-campus activities such as Austin Youth Council, the school district’s strategic planning committee and the National League of Cities.
Tovar said she is motivated to do as much as she can in high school to help figure out what job she wants to do as a career.
“I think one of the biggest things is right before you go to college is when you can start experiencing everything, and you get to have a little taste of everything to make sure that what you end up doing for the rest of your life is that one thing you do like,” Tovar said.
She said she sees her extracurricular activities as an opportunity to become a well rounded person.
“Austin Youth Council and Student Council helped me build my civic awareness side, but Key Club also helped me become a servant,” Tovar said. “I also helped with prom committee, which was just a fun senior thing to do. So I think I just wanted to have a well rounded experience for high school, and there were small little things I learned that were different from each club so I really enjoyed that.”
Although each organization takes time out of Tovar’s schedule, there are some that are much more time consuming than others.
“For sure band. Band takes your life,” Tovar said. “During the summer we do about 250 hours for marching season, and we also have rehearsals once marching season’s over so it’s like an all year round thing.”
Tovar’s role as a leader in many clubs also requires a lot of time and effort.
“Key club takes a lot of time too because I’m president and it’s a student led organization. So, if I want meetings to happen, if I want community service to happen, if I want senior officers to get cords or something like that, all of that is up to me as president,” Tovar said.
Tovar’s had many memorable experiences over the course of her high school years. Some of her personal highlights include meeting her international director for Key Club and going to Washington, D.C. for the National League of Cities Congressional City Conference where she saw President Obama as well as a Senate session.
Being involved in so many activities meant that Tovar had to manage her time carefully.
“I think that was one of the biggest lessons I learned throughout all four years, was how to deal with time,” she said. “And how to realize that as much as I want to, I can’t be in three places at the same time.”
Tovar said she has no regrets.
“Sometimes it just takes more time to be on my extracurriculars then I can take on my actual classes because I’m just so involved. But it’s so worth it, I wouldn’t change a thing about it,” Tovar said.
Throughout Tovar’s high school experience, many teachers have had an impact on her. Some of her most important mentors were Peters, her band director, Tate Fincher, and science teacher Regina McGough.
It also worked the other way around, as Tovar also made significant impressions on those who had the opportunity to teach her.
“Her desire to help other kids, to just really understand the world that we live in and not really shy away from anything that’s negative or scary or flies in the face of what she already knows or believes and she’ll take it on is pretty awesome,” Peters said. “It’s inspiring to me to just keep teaching and focus on possibly uncovering what kids are capable of as much as possible.”
