The high school graduates excel in academic and leadership abilities
TACOMA, Wash. – the University of Puget Sound is proud to announce that Mary Aquiningoc, of San Diego, and Alona Stroup, of Bremerton, Wash., have been selected as the national liberal arts college’s two new Matelich Scholars. The incoming students will join the Class of 2019 this fall.
Puget Sound offers the Matelich Scholarship, the most prestigious award for students who combine extraordinary promise in academics and leadership. It is funded by a generous gift from alumnus George E. Matelich ’78 and Susan E. Matelich to Puget Sound’s One [of a Kind] comprehensive campaign, which recently concluded, raising $131.6 million. The highly competitive award covers all tuition and fees, including room and board, for up to four years.
Matelich Scholars are chosen from a pool of about 5,500 applicants to Puget Sound each year. They are selected for their drive and integrity, their potential for outstanding academic and personal achievement, their commitment to service, and their capacity for a life of leadership.
Aquiningoc and Stroup will join six other Matelich Scholars selected in the first three years of the program, forming a cohort of eight, whose members continue to grow as individuals.
Mary Aquiningoc (San Diego, Calif.)
Aquiningoc, a cello player, volunteer camp counselor, and AP Scholar with Honor, has stepped up to take leadership roles wherever she has seen the need—in ventures ranging from a robotics club to collecting aid for Kashmir flood victims. She studied at Westview High School in San Diego, where she took seven AP courses.
One of Aquiningoc’s early inspirations was the Westview Robotics Club. Finding the club lacked organization, she set out to get it to enhance its chances of winning the international FIRST Robotics Competition. Consulting throughout with other members, she constructed a flow chart of roles and processes, set up a scouting team to gather intelligence on opponents. She helped develop designs and mechanisms to create the group’s robot.
“Within one year, I went from organizing nuts and screws to solving many major problems,” she observed. Aquiningoc was elected captain of the robotics team and then president of the robotics program. In 2014 the team made it to the world championship semifinals, competing against 4,500 international teams.
As vice president of Advocates for a Better Environment, Aquiningoc recruited and trained students to oversee vital recycling efforts on her school’s campus. The result: the collection of almost 1,500 gallons of recyclable material a month.
“I have a passion for innovation, ideas that make you think, ‘why didn’t we do this before?’ and change things for the better,” she wrote in her essay for the scholarship.
Aquiningoc played cello in an ensemble, and her school orchestra, interned at the Biodiversity Research Center of the Californias, belonged to a discussion group on gender and social equity, and founded Westview Nerdfighters, a local branch of a global alliance that celebrates imagination and the intellect. She is interested in studying biology and business at Puget Sound and is planning a medical industry career.
Alona Stroup (Bremerton, Wash.)
Stroup, a talented writer, and artist attended Bremerton High School and took courses at Olympic College. She joined the school’s guitar and rock climbing clubs and participated in the high school Knowledge Bowl quiz team.
The school experience was very different for Stroup than for most young people. In middle school, Stroup took on responsibilities caring for her ill mother. After her mother was moved to a nursing home, she was taken in by her older brother. By her sophomore year of high school, her mother had lost her battle with the disease, and a year later, her father died from cancer.
In the midst of these painful days, one experience stood out. “A teacher changed my life,” Stroup wrote in her Matelich Scholarship essay. “A teacher told me I was good at something. She said I could write.” Stroup threw herself into her writing, winning the 2014 “It’s Always Something” teen writing contest at Gilda’s Club, a cancer support community. She published the essay about her father in Seattle Times, and she still meets regularly with an editor at the paper who serves as her mentor.
Seeking to “be more than I was,” Stroup started volunteering at Gilda’s Club, where she participated in art therapy for children who have been affected by cancer. She continues to work at the group, using art as a way to connect with the kids.
After being approached by a literary agent, Stroup is now writing a book about how her early life and her parents’ deaths have shaped her. She plans to make this the first of many books. Stroup notes that her “personal drive has been demonstrated in the countless hours I have spent hunched over my computer, striving to make myself vulnerable enough to the world that people may learn from my struggles.” Stroup is interested in studying communications and English at Puget Sound. She plans to make writing her career.
About the Matelich Scholar Program
The Matelich Scholar Program was established in 2010 through the generosity of George E. Matelich ’78 and Susan E. Matelich, who wish to provide future generations of students with the opportunity to pursue a life-changing Puget Sound education. Both were the first members of their families to graduate from a four-year college. George Matelich is a managing director of Kelso & Company, chair of the American Prairie Reserve, a Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council member, and a trustee emeritus at the University of Puget Sound. Susan Matelich serves as a member of the American Prairie Reserve Board of Directors and as treasurer and emergency medical technician for the Mamaroneck/Larchmont Volunteer Ambulance Corps. Two Matelich Scholars are selected each year from the incoming class.
For information about eligibility for the Matelich Scholar Program, contact the Office of Admission at 800.396.7191 or visit pugetsound.edu/scholarships.
Press photos of the Matelich Scholars are available upon request.
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