Submitted by Saint Martin’s University
This fall 2020, Saint Martin’s University will welcome seven new Act Six Scholars to the incoming class of 2024. The scholars are among 148 emerging urban and community leaders from 103 different high schools to receive full college scholarships as members of the latest Act Six cohort.
Selected through a rigorous three-month competition from among more than 198 applicants, these diverse student leaders were selected for their distinctive leadership skills, academic potential and commitment to making a difference in their communities.
The second cadre of Saint Martin’s Act Six Scholars include: Marissa Escobedo, Franklin Pierce High School; Yuan Fernandez, Highline High School; Imahni Hawkins, Stadium High School; Kelene Mandefro, Garfield High School; Bernand Mariano, Washington High School; Jose Rodriguez, Federal Way Senior High School; and Abd Scott, Washington High School.
“We are excited to welcome Cadre two to our campus this year,” said Saint Martin’s dean of enrollment Pamela Holsinger-Fuchs, Ph.D. “The gifts that the individual members bring is powerful for our campus.”
The Act Six network is a leadership development and scholarship initiative led by Degrees of Change that identifies, trains and supports the region’s most promising urban students as transformative campus and community leaders.
Act Six connects local faith-based community affiliates with faith- and social justice-based colleges to equip emerging urban and community leaders to engage the college campus and their communities at home through a simple but powerful four-part strategy: Recruit and Select, Train and Prepare, Send and Fund, and Support and Inspire.
Since the program’s inception in 2002, more than 800 ethnically diverse and mostly first-generation, low-income Act Six scholarship recipients from Tacoma, Seattle, Yakima and Spokane; Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis-St Paul, Minnesota; Chicago, Illinois; and Indianapolis, Indiana, have enrolled at 17 private colleges and universities.
In 2018, Saint Martin’s joined Gonzaga University, Northwest University, Pacific Lutheran University and Whitworth University to become the fifth college partner in the Tacoma-Seattle Act Six network. Saint Martin’s University selected its inaugural Act Six Scholars in March of 2019.
Saint Martin’s University is an independent, four-year, coeducational university located on a wooded campus of more than 300 acres in Lacey, Washington. Established in 1895 by the Catholic Order of Saint Benedict, the University is one of 13 Benedictine colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, and the only one west of the Rocky Mountains. Saint Martin’s University prepares students for successful lives through its 29 majors and 11 graduate programs and five certificate programs spanning the liberal arts, business, education, nursing and engineering. Saint Martin’s welcomes more than 1,300 undergraduate students and 250 graduate students from many ethnic and religious backgrounds to its Lacey campus, and more students to its extended campus located at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
