Ridge Alumni Fund Honors Graduating Senior with Largest-Yet Scholarship

Ridge High School graduating senior Sarah Amick joined the list of the Ridge Alumni Memorial Scholarship's recipients who have shown character and resilience in the face of challenges, receiving the AMS's largest award yet of $8,500 at the school's recent 2013 Awards Night.

Earlier this month, Amick found herself before the awards night presentation at a reception surrounded by friends, family, RHS staff, and board members from Ridge AMS and the Bernards Township Education Foundation.

This fall, Amick is headed to Tulane University in New Orleans to prepare for a career in pediatric medicine.

"I want to surround myself with small smiling faces, miniature bundles of joy, runny noses and aching stomachs. I want to make sick children healthy again," Amick wrote in the essay that won her this year's scholarship, printed on the Ridge AMS website.

"I want to help families, and travel the world and work with people of different cultures and find cures. This is my dream, to become a pediatrician. And sometimes I think my dream cannot come true," wrote Amick, who also wrote that her father died when she was just three years old, and whose family more recently experienced an economic setback.

“Sarah’s essay was a wonderful match for our selection criteria,” Jane Cullinan, a member of the Ridge AMS selection committee said earlier this year, when Amick was chosen to receive the scholarship in honor of a Ridge graduate who died in Viet Nam.

"Although she’s faced tough circumstances, she doesn’t dwell on difficulties — she looks for opportunities," Cullinan said.

The Ridge AMS grant has been focused on recognizing applicants’ character, determination, and non-traditional achievements, rather just than grades or test scores. Winners may use the award as they see fit, whether for tuition, transportation, travel, vocational training, or any personal growth opportunity they identify, according to the organization.

Cullinan added, "From a crop of terrific candidates, Sarah’s application stood out in treating challenging situations in a way that made readers smile at her optimism. She remembered a question her rabbi once asked his congregation. ‘Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?’ She went on to explain that once these items enter boiling water, the carrot softens, the egg hardens, but the coffee beans turn the water into a rich, aromatic beverage."

"She describes herself as ‘making a strong brew,’” Cullinan noted.

The $8,500 award, which recognizes a  graduating RHS senior’s character and determination, is the organization’s  largest since its inception in 2008. "We’ve been able to increase the award each year, thanks to the generosity of Ridge alumni and the whole community,” according to Carol Mason Schoenig, a founding trustee of Ridge AMS.

Ridge AMS operates in partnership  with the Bernards Township Education Foundation, a not-for-profit organization focused on program development and process management for public education, community outreach, and leadership formation, according to information from AMS.