To celebrate Bridgeland High School’s first graduating class, The Howard Hughes Corporation offered graduating seniors a chance to receive one of two $2,500 scholarships to help defray the cost of college.
The application required students to fill out a questionnaire and submit it along with their transcript and essay by the stated deadline. The review committee was presented with a strong group of applicants from which to make their selections. The two winners, Sarah Meyers and Eliana Torrez, each received $2,500 to be applied towards college expenses.
Sarah Meyers spent her freshman year of high school studying in Mexico. While doing a report on potable water and speaking with her teacher, she became aware that not everyone has access to natural resources, especially clean water. Over the course of a year, she gained insight into the different living conditions between life in the United States as compared to life in Mexico. The experience sparked a sense of motivation in her and is fueling her desire to study Environmental Science and Geophysics at the school of Geosciences at Texas A&M University this fall. She hopes that by learning about resource sustainability she’ll contribute to innovating new ways that provide clean water to communities where it is lacking. When expressing gratitude for the award Meyers said, “With a twin sister attending college at the same time, the scholarship will help ease some of the burden on the family finances.”
Eliana Torrez was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia when she was 11-years old and missed her sixth-grade year. After a conversation with one of her doctors when he shared his experience treating children with cancer in Botswana, she learned there were many sick children and not enough people who were properly trained to help them. It was from this conversation that Eliana realized she wanted to become a pediatric oncologist. Because of her experience, she knows she can relate to children going through one of the toughest moments of their life.
Eliana plans to attend Abilene Christian University to study biochemistry, the first step toward reaching her ultimate goal. “I’ve been applying for scholarships to help with my tuition, so this helps so much, especially with how the economy is doing and with my dad in the oil and gas industry. This came at just the right time,” Torrez shared.
Original plans included presenting the scholarship award at the high school’s award night, but in order to maintain social distancing, those plans needed to be modified. Instead, the Bridgeland team made surprise visits to the girls’ homes from the safe distance of their front walkway to share the exciting news. Many tears of joy were shed during the surprise visits to personally grant the awards.
For exemplary performance encouraging high academic achievement and preparing students for success after high school, Bridgeland’s highly acclaimed high school received an accountability rating of A on the school report card from the Texas Education Agency in 2018-2019. Both students are shining examples of the high-quality education that Bridgeland residents and their children receive from Cy-Fair ISD schools and are the perfect candidates for Bridgeland’s first Scholarship program.
The scholarship program, which started as a way to celebrate the first graduating class from Bridgeland High School, is expected to continue to honor a long line of deserving students for years to come. We congratulate Sarah and Eliana on their tremendous achievements and wish them the best of luck in their future educational pursuits.