Sismbury Student Receives

The VHS Collaborative (http://thevhscollaborative.org/), the nonprofit pioneer of K-12 online learning, today announced the winners of their fifth annual college scholarship program. Three thousand dollars in funds have been distributed among four VHS students in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Wisconsin to use towards college expenses.

Three of the winners created and submitted videos and the fourth submitted an essay that described how their VHS course experience helped them to develop the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century. The scholarship review committee included VHS staff members from each department who evaluated the submissions based on their content, quality, creativity and relevance.

“The submissions this year were exceptional and the decisions were very difficult for us to make,” said Liz Pape, President & CEO of VHS. “All of the winners did a great job showcasing their achievements and explaining how their VHS courses helped them develop the critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity skills they will need for success in college and careers.”

Two students each received a $1,000 scholarship—Emily Willson and Omesh Kamat. Willson attends the Appleton eSchool in Wisconsin at which she took seven VHS courses. She’ll be using her scholarship towards her tuition at Wheaton College where she will be majoring in Applied Math and Economics. Kamat hails from Connecticut where he attends Simsbury High School. He’ll be attending Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the Fall where he’ll be majoring in Mechanical with Aerospace or Robotics Engineering. He took VHS’ AP® Statistics course, which he says enhanced his critical thinking and creative problem solving skills.

The final two scholarship winners--Valerie Gemba of Boston, MA and Michael Slifer of Cromwell, CT--each won $500 to use towards college expenses. Gemba became interested in business after taking VHS’ International Business and Learning to Invest in the Stock Market courses, which eventually led to her applying to and being accepted at Bentley University. Slifer credits his VHS classes for teaching him time management, a skill that will be invaluable when he majors in Meteorology at SUNY @ Albany in the fall.