Seven outstanding African American students will be among the recipients of Chicago Defender Charities scholarships this year.
Taylor Moore, Richard Gregory Dixon Jr., twins Alicia and Felicia Roberts, Phillip “E'Xander” Young, Tenesha K. Waits and Myesha Mullens will all be honorees at the CDC Scholarship & Awards Gala on Thursday at the DuSable Museum of African American History.
In order to qualify for the scholarship, the seven students had to maintain at least a 2.7 GPAand demonstrate financial need.
Col. Eugene Scott, president of the Chicago Defender Charities, explained that the CDC also looked at the students’ extracurricular activities.
Indeed, the recipients all have unique features to their academic and extracurricular profiles.
Moore is a motivational speaker who travels across the country. This is Dixon’s fourth year as a CDC scholarship recipient, and he is a member of the Black Male Initiative at Northern Illinois University. The Roberts sisters are both pre-med students, majoring in Comparative Human Development.
Young created his major, Entertainment, at University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana and wants to open a chain of schools for youth interested in the arts.
Waits maintained a 4.0 GPA during her two most challenging semesters in the six-year pharmacy program at Xavier University in New Orleans. A dance major at the Boston Conservatory, Mullens is the first student ever to receive an Arts Scholarship from the CDC.
“We’re really proud of our scholarship program this year because we’re going to have approximately 49 students that are receiving $5,000 each,” Scott said.
The purpose of the CDC is to improve the lives of African Americans through educational and philanthropic programs. In addition to awarding more than $300,000 in college scholarships annually, the CDC also gives food baskets to needy families at Christmas and feeds the homeless at shelters on Thanksgiving.
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