ESL Resident Scholarships

Every spring, Palomar's Foundation administers several "ESL Resident Scholarships," formerly known as "Resident Alien Scholarships," to ESL students. According to Kim Hartwell of the Foundation, the criteria have always been:

• Is enrolled in an ESL class
• Demonstrates financial need
• Is a California resident
• Shows initiative and motivation in the classrooms
• Shows academic promise.

This year, each recipient will be awarded $200 on the college's Scholarship Night in May, which is always quite a celebratory event with the friends and families of all the scholarship awardees on hand to share the joy.

The word "scholarship" in the title of this particular award is a misnomer, though, in that this is not your usual scholarship that everyone can apply for. Rather, it is an ESL-faculty-nominated award of free money for a select few of our deserving students.

The nominees also do not go through the college's Scholarship Committee. Instead, we in the ESL Dept. review the selections, approve them, and forward to the Foundation a list of final winners along with their bios to process. It has been decided that at our next monthly dept. meeting on March 7, we will decide on this year's recipients of the ESL Resident Scholarships.

Therefore, if you have a student in your class who has wowed you in a significant way or has been an inspiration for his or her classmates, I urge you to write a brief bio of this meritorious student and submit it as your nomination. Please give your written nomination to your program coordinator no later than our next dept. meeting on March 7.

It appears that in an effort to boost attendance and push student success, we have put too much emphasis on problems (like our attendance policy with the threat to punish students with excessive absences by dropping them or our early alert system to intervene in the cases of unsuccessful students), and have consequently neglected positive reinforcement. As we publicize the ESL Resident Scholarships across the whole dept. and seek to reward role models in our various programs, our impact on student success can hopefully become even stronger.