Seniors ride academic accomplishments, civic spirit to Kohl Fellowship glory

While many seniors already have colleges picked out, they’re faced with the next problem: paying for it. These students have many ways to pay for schooling, but one magical source of money comes from scholarships.  Although there are many prestigious scholarships around the country, there is one that focuses on the character of students: the Herb Kohl Scholarship. Recently, three seniors from West earned this esteemed award: Sydney Butz, Anika Larson, and Angelina Wang.

“It’s a $10,000 scholarship, and it’s for students who demonstrate quality of character, high academic performance, and involvement in their school community as well as community service, whether that service happens in school or out in the broader community,” Principal Erin Kohl said. “They're looking for people that are serving others, are involved in the school community, and have a quality of character and strong academic performance.”

To earn this monetary prize, this scholarship asks students to fill out multiple essays about who they are, how they volunteer, and how they perform academically.. 

“A lot of things have to be submitted by the students, such as letters of recommendation and they have a committee of people that sort through all of those and determine who the finalists are,” Kohl said. “From the finalists, those applications get reviewed again to select the winners. There’s only 100 students in the entire state that get selected as Herb Kohl Scholars.”

While West typically does quite well in representation, this year’s showing is unique.

“We do have a handful of students who apply for the Herb Kohl scholarship, but we do not have a winner every year,” Kohl said. “Most years when we do have a winner, it’s one. But to have three in the same year is actually really unusual because we don’t even have a winner every single year. There’s definitely years when none of our students who apply get chosen and when I think of the caliber of students who apply for it every year, I can’t even imagine how competitive it is out there because I’m always a little shocked about which students don’t actually get it.”

One of those winners, Sydney Butz, felt she met all the criteria and decided to apply.

“I read the criteria, and I thought I kind of fit what they were looking for in an applicant and a recipient,” she said. “So I figured why not give it a shot as the girl who won it from our school last year was a teammate of mine in twirling.

Monetary concerns definitely played a motivational role for Butz.

“The school I’m attending has very expensive out-of-state tuition,” she said. “I knew if I was able to win the money, it would be a really big help.”

The application process required students to fill out multiple essays covering all areas from education, and their grades to community work, and leadership skills. Although many essays that were required to be submitted were small, there was also a grander, free-write essay where students had to write about anything they felt made them stand out.

“My big essay was about the importance of service to me and how it’s meant to me throughout my entire life since I’ve been volunteering in Oshkosh from a really young age,” Butz said. “I grew up following in my mom’s footsteps since she volunteered in a ton of events, and she would always bring me along with her. I always enjoyed it since I got to give back to the community as much as it gave back to me.”

Larson also decided to apply to help with her future education.

“I knew I would probably end up at a private school since most of the schools I applied to were private, so I knew tuition would cost a lot, and I just wanted the money to help pay for my education,” she said.

Larson had dedicated a lot of her time to helping out her community in a different way: she wanted to improve life for people her own age.

“I think I got it because I’ve dedicated a lot of time and energy to improving my community in various ways, caring about the future of Wisconsin’s youth,” she said. “My favorite thing that I do is volunteer as a public defender for local teens, but I’ve also introduced some legislation that’s currently in committee regarding civic education and youth.”

The final winner from West, Angelina Wang, wanted to apply to help show the things she had accomplished throughout her life.

“I applied because I thought it was a really prestigious scholarship in Wisconsin and so it was a scholarship that was merit-based,” she said. “ definitely wanted to show my abilities in my scholarly activities.”

Wang felt her passions helped her stand out from the crowd of applicants but also her commitments in the school and leadership.

“I think I was selected because I showed merit-based excellence within my school activities, but also I demonstrated leadership within the community, such as my volunteer work and what I did outside the community,” she said. “I also did a lot of extracurriculars, and I think I demonstrated a lot of unique extracurriculars because I’m a baton twirler, and that’s a unique type of sport but, also, I had a leadership position within there.”

Although she is proud of herself and the other winners, Larson felt that this win reflected on how well teachers in the Oshkosh Area School District did at helping her learn.

“I think it really speaks to the excellence of teachers within the OASD because there’s also a student at North selected, Emily Heider, so that’s four people within the OASD that were selected,” she said. “For three of the winners to come from West and four in general from the OASD, I think it reflected incredibly well on our district and teachers who have dedicated so much time and energy to helping us succeed in any way that they can.”

Overall, Kohl is proud of her Wildcats.

“I think the students fit the criteria perfectly,” she said. “It’s a very rigorous process and they hold very high standards, and we have a lot of really great students who are very involved and perform really well academically and with this award; it takes something a little extra to stand out from the crowd. I feel like these students do things far and above what a typical high school student does, especially in the area of service. They all have done things outside of school that provide a great service to people in our community. I think that's one of the things that makes them stand out.”

By Ruby Pluchinsky

Oshkosh West Index Volume 118 Issue 7

April 25th, 2022