Engineering students say scholarships allow them to be fully engaged in their College experience.

“Scholarships not only bought my tuition and fees, but my peace of mind. They helped make my four years in college a renaissance of learning and personal growth,” civil engineering senior Patrick Hughes told about 150 scholarship donors and recipients at the College of Engineering scholarship reception on April 17 at the Tucson Marriott University Park.

“I came to the University of Arizona as a nervous shut-in,” he said. “Within a year I was leading the UA Rube Goldberg Team and was an Engineering Ambassador promoting the College to prospective students and their parents.”

Hughes was one of 11 da Vinci scholarship recipients and one of more than 350 UA undergraduate and graduate engineering students to earn scholarships from private donors totaling $1 million in the 2014-2015 academic year.

Bright Futures

Hughes will work as a summer intern at ExxonMobil in Houston before starting his PhD program in structural engineering this fall at the University of California, San Diego. Several other scholarship recipients at the event were also preparing to start jobs or enter graduate engineering programs at top-ranked universities.

Industrial engineering senior Elisa Duarte, recipient of the Jack S. McDuff Scholarship, will intern at Raytheon before starting the master’s program in management science and engineering at Stanford this fall.

“The UA College of Engineering has provided me endless resources and outlets to explore my passions and achieve my goals,” she said. “I am very grateful to my professors, advisers and mentors, and to donors like Jack McDuff, who have helped me along the way. I hope I can use the skills I have learned at the UA to give back and make an impact on others’ lives, as mine has been impacted here.”

Scholarship Reception Slide Show

Ivy Hasman, recipient of a Conrad L. Fraps Memorial Scholarship, will start a job as a process engineer at Intel after receiving a BS in materials science and engineering in May.

Jarek Carroll, who received the Ron B. Riggs Memorial Scholarship, graduated in December 2014 with a BS in mining and geological engineering. He had three internships with Freeport-McMoRan as a student and is now working full-time for the company at its Miami, Arizona, mine.

Senior Jeremy Gin, who received a Thomas R. Brown Memorial Scholarship, plans to work at Sandia National Laboratories, where he has previously been an intern, after graduation.

“I am extremely grateful for the Thomas Brown Foundation’s investment in my personal education and development, as well as in the College of Engineering and department of electrical and computer engineering,” he said. “I have been able to fully devote myself to my studies and to how my engineering skill sets can be used to best serve humanity.”

Top picture: Kim Fox (BS/ME 1959; center right)) and his wife Corinne (Class of 1961; center left)) with the 2014-2015 recipients of the Kim and Corinne Fox Scholarship.