{"id":203581,"date":"2012-04-17T13:24:11","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T13:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/?p=11369"},"modified":"2025-01-30T23:35:23","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T04:35:23","slug":"school-honors-top-scholars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/04\/school-honors-top-scholars\/","title":{"rendered":"School Honors Top Scholars (VIDEO)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"On the evening of March 22nd<\/sup>, the School of Engineering celebrated the academic achievements of outstanding undergraduate and graduate students during the annual Awards Reception and Ceremony held at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts. \u00a0View the video<\/a> here and photos here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The evening began with a gala reception in the Jorgensen Gallery, whose walls were graced by a selection of exquisite wood block prints by Connecticut artist Lynita Shimizu. As proud parents, scholarship donors and students connected prior to the awards ceremony, visitors had the opportunity to view posters summarizing student research projects underway in faculty laboratories across the School of Engineering.<\/p>\n

During the awards ceremony, Dean of Engineering Mun Y. Choi thanked and acknowledged the many corporate, faculty and alumni donors in the audience who have chosen to invest in outstanding engineering students.\u00a0 He said that the support provided to engineering students by generous donors carries inestimable value, noting \u201cBehind each donor, there is a story. In many cases, it\u2019s a story about perseverance, hard work and also success.\u201d\u00a0 To underscore this point, he described the lives of four alumni donors whose tenacity, dedication and commitment to giving back exemplify the qualities that all members of the UConn engineering community admire and aspire to.<\/p>\n

He began with the late Jack Stephens<\/a> (\u201947), who taught civil engineering at UConn for nearly 40 years.\u00a0 \u201cAs a child growing up during the Great Depression, he faced many hurdles, many hardships. As a young man during World War II, he served this nation with great distinction. He marched with General Patton\u2019s Third Army across Europe and liberated many parts of Europe. For his bravery, he was awarded two Bronze Stars. After receiving his graduate degree from Purdue, he applied this passion toward teaching and mentoring. Through his talents, he trained over 4,000 students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving on to alumnus John Longobardi (\u201951), he noted, \u201cAs a child growing up in Connecticut, with his father serving as a shoemaker, he kept a lot of jobs throughout school. Eventually, he was drafted in the Army and served in Africa during World War II. After the war, he earned his degree and led a distinguished career with Sikorsky for 36 years, working on advanced manufacturing technologies in rotorcraft design.\u201d Crediting the nurturing environment provided by his parents as important to his success, in their honor he established the Pasquale & Maria Longobardi Scholarship.<\/p>\n

In the case of brothers Sam (\u201850) and Stephen<\/a> Altschuler (\u201954), Dean Choi said,\u201cTheir father was head of the electrical department at Norwich \"\"<\/a>Tech, their mom a teacher in New York City. The family valued education and also giving back to the community. After earning their degrees, both pursued MBAs and independently established businesses that are still going very strong today: Altron and Altek.\u201d \u00a0The Altschulers have supported the Altschuler Family Scholarship since 1993.<\/p>\n

Dean Choi urged the scholarship recipients to take the time to learn more about the donors, each of whom has a story and to \u201ccontinue their virtuous cycle by giving back to the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the recipients, these scholarships make a world of difference.<\/p>\n

Sean Morrisroe, a Mechanical Engineering (ME) junior, received a W. Donald Johnston Memorial Award and an Engineering Undergraduate Merit Scholarship.\u00a0 Thanks to these scholarships, he said, \u201cInstead of picking up another part-time job, I can focus on my studies.\u201d As a Presidential Scholar at UConn, Sean\u2019s tuition is covered, but he works as a paid Resident Assistant in one of UConn\u2019s dormitories to reduce expenses associated with room and board, fees, books and other costs.\u00a0 His scholarships \u201cHave made a huge difference for me as an undergraduate.\u00a0 Scholarships have allowed me to excel academically because I haven\u2019t had to worry so much about money,\u201d he said. \u00a0Sean plans to attend graduate school after earning his bachelor\u2019s degree.<\/p>\n

Fellow ME junior Matthew Roberts, who received the Winthrop E. Hilding Undergraduate Scholarship in Engineering and Winthrop & Dolores Hilding Scholarship, concurred, noting that a family member recently underwent an intensive joint surgery.\u00a0 Besides the pride he felt in bringing a smile to his parents\u2019 faces, he said that not having to worry about college expenses gives the family greater financial security.\u00a0 Matthew, \"\"<\/a>currently a paid student researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Gao, will trade pay for course credit next fall to complete needed credits for his enrollment in the accelerated ME master\u2019s program at UConn.<\/p>\n

Environmental Engineering junior Claudia Szerakowski, who received the Jack E. Stephens Scholarship this year, and the Paul Krenicki Endowed Scholarship in Sustainable Energy in 2011, said \u201cReceiving these scholarships puts less financial stress on me and my family so that I do not have to struggle to balance studying and working to pay off bills at the same time. It also leaves me more time to join extracurricular activities and participate in community outreach. I can also stretch out my college savings in order to pursue a higher degree after receiving my bachelor\u2019s degree.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the evening, outstanding graduate students were awarded more than 180 competitive federal, foundation, international and society fellowships; and 237 high achieving undergraduates were awarded scholarships totaling over $520,000. View the full list of 2012 scholarship and fellowship awardees here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the evening of March 22nd, the School of Engineering celebrated the academic achievements of outstanding undergraduate and graduate students during the annual Awards Reception and Ceremony held at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":224878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2110],"class_list":["post-203581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-12 17:32:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224880,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203581\/revisions\/224880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/224878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203581"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=203581"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=203581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}