ACEC/MW 2022 Student Scholarship Recipients

2022-2023 ACEC Metropolitan Washington Scholarship Winners Statement

By, Pedro Capestany, PE

After our first successful scholarship award season, I am pleased to say that we were able to build on that success and increase our scholarship awards for 2022. Last year, we awarded three scholarships of $3,000 each, and this year we are awarding four scholarships for $4,000 each to the engineering students attending colleges and universities within our ACEC/MW footprint. We also expanded our reach and were able to build new relationships with some of the universities that did not participate with our scholarship program last year. This year the scholarship committee received 10 very strong and diverse applications from both undergraduate and graduate students. It’s great to see that the future of our industry is in such great hands.

Once again, our judges were ACEC/MW Scholarship Subcommittee members and consisted of Past Board Chairs of the Association: Debby Orsak, P.E. (Cagley & Associates, Inc.), Stephen Walters, CEP (Parsons), Rizwan Siddiqi, P.E. (EBA Engineering, Inc.), Eric Rehwoldt, P.E., P.G. (Seismic Surveys, Inc.), and me – Pedro Capestany, P.E. (AECOM).  The scholarship application this year, as well as the scoring and ranking process, generally followed the established model used by ACEC National.  We took great strides to ensure a fair and equitable selection process.
 
We are very pleased to announce the following ACEC/MW Scholarship winners for 2022:


 Annushka Aliev, pursuing B.S. major in Civil Engineering, Environmental and Water Resources Track (University of Maryland)
 

 Jada-Mercy Ayebae, pursuing B.S. major in Civil and Environmental Engineering (University of Maryland)
 

 Gia Ha, EIT, ENV SP, pursuing Master's in Sustainable Land Development (Virginia Tech)


Nadezhda Levitova, pursuing Master's in Civil Engineering (Johns Hopkins University)

 
These ACEC/MW scholarship recipients have been advanced to compete for the ACEC National scholarships.  We wish them the best of luck in that competition!
 
We want to thank all the students who participated and submitted scholarship applications!  Your ACEC/MW Board of Directors is committed to the growth of our scholarship program and we are excited for what lies ahead.  Our members and industry partners have embraced our scholarship program and we encourage all qualifying engineering students to participate in the coming years.  
 
Finally, I would like to thank our Scholarship Subcommittee members and judges, as well as Anna Seekins and Mac Canon of ACEC/MW, for their continued enthusiastic participation, leadership, support and dedication to ensuring a successful and fair application and merit-based judging process. We have a plan to continue to grow the ACEC/MW Scholarship Program through the leadership of the Subcommittee and our Board of Directors!
 
We encourage everyone to look forward to upcoming opportunities to contribute to the ACEC/MW Scholarship Fund so we can continue to expand scholarship opportunities to deserving students and budding Engineers who represent the future of our AEC industry!

 

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Pedro Capestany, P.E. – ACEC/MW Past Board Chair