1998 Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholars Awards - 1998 nominees and recipients

Black Issues in Higher Education, April 16, 1998 by Karin Chenoweth, Jamilah Evelyn

Six years ago, Black Issues In Higher Education established the Sports Scholars Award to honor undergraduate students of color who exemplify the standards set by tennis great Arthur Ashe Jr.

A scholar and athlete, Ashe dedicated his life to expanding opportunities for young people. Each year, we invite every postsecondary institution in the country to participate in this awards program by nominating their outstanding sports scholars. Any student who is named an Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar must exhibit academic excellence and community activism as well as athletic prowess.

On the following pages are listed many fine student athletes who meet very rigorous standards. To be included, they needed to compete, at any level above club play, in an intercollegiate sport; maintain a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.2; and be active, on their campuses or in their communities.

Two of these scholar athletes stood out beyond the others -- LeTisha Shaw and Patrick Stephen. They are the 1998 Arthur Ashe Jr. Athletes of the Year.

Black Issues In Higher Education salutes Patrick and LeTisha -- and all the scholar athletes on the following pages.

1998 ARTHUR ASHE JR. SPORTS SCHOLARS AWARDS

IMPRESSIVE -- DILIGENCE

LeTisHA Shaw Junior Stevens Institute of Technology Cumulative GPA: 3.72 Major: mechanical Engineering Sports: Division III Basketball (Captain): Soccer (Captain): Track and Field (Acting Captain)

When people who know LeTisha Shaw speak of her, it is with fondness and admiration. Admiration because they know she is maintaining a 3.7 grade point average while carrying twenty credits in a very rigorous and demanding course of study -- mechanical engineering -- while competing in three sports -- basketball, soccer, and track and field -- and actively participating in volunteer work. Fondness because she is what her soccer coach calls, "a regular person."

"She is an amazing young person. She's one of those leaders by example," says Sarah Raslowsky, head soccer coach of Stevens Institute of Technology.

Stevens is not a sports powerhouse. An NCAA Division III school in Hoboken, N.J., it offers no athletic scholarships. It is, rather, a rigorous engineering school that graduated the likes of such people as the founder of Texas Instruments and sculptor Alexander Calder.

Ken Nilsen, dean of student life at Stevens, reports that students are required to complete 156 credits in order to graduate -- more than any other engineering school in the country.

To Nilsen, one of the most impressive things Shaw has done -- besides being named to the dean's list five times -- is to win the Exxon scholarship -- a full tuition award that includes a stipend plus summer jobs working with Exxon research labs. It is only offered to two students a year. "She is a very impressive person," says Nilsen.

Shaw, whose father has a mechanical engineering degree from City College of New York, became interested in science during a physics class in a central New Jersey high school. But when she participated in a three-week summer program at Rutgers University known as The Engineering Experience for Minorities (TEEM), she became serious about pursuing science as a career.

"We took physics, chemistry, and engineering," she recalls."The whole purpose was to get us prepared for a design project. Ours was a home gonorrhea test kit."

Of the experience, Shaw says, "My regular high school prepared me academically, but TEEM prepared me for the lab science, and design and presentation."

That plus her academic record made her an attractive recruit for Stevens.

"My guidance counselor liked Stevens and told me to apply," says Shaw. "It was the first school that accepted me."

Although there is no obligation on the part of either Exxon or Shaw to continue their relationship past graduation, Nilsen says one of Exxon's primary reasons for offering the scholarships is to groom potential managers and executives for their corporation.

Shaw's current design project is a photocatalytic oxidation unit which uses ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun to react with water and titanium dioxide to cleanse waste water.

"The trick," she says, "is to track the sun."

In addition to her academic work, Shaw is captain of the basketball team and of the soccer team -- elected to both positions by her teammates -- and acting captain of the track and field team. She was named outstanding defensive player in both soccer and basketball, and, her soccer coach says, "she isn't always looking to score -- she will dish [the ball] off to another player."

Her track and field coach, Adberto Alonso, is himself an engineer and a graduate of Stevens who currently works on navigational guidance systems for Kearfott Corporation, a former division of Singer.

"If I ask her to do something for me, she'll do it," says Alonso, noting that she throws the javelin, runs sprints, and -- in a pinch last month -- ran a distance medley relay. Because Shaw is a sprinter, she ran the shortest leg of the relay -- 400 m -- to post a team time of 15:26, a respectable time for a brand-new varsity program, and a school record.