■ Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky has named 19 recipients of scholarships, each in the amount of $1,250. these 19 students were joined by 31 additional scholarship recipients across North America as part of the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Scholarship Program. all scholarship recipients are children of Toyota workers.
Among the Kentucky recipients are five students from Lexington: Ryan Baltenberger, Sarah Cleaver, Stefani Cleaver, Kenneth Johnson III and Whitney Scott.
Other recipients are Damien Hicks, Dry Ridge; Ethan Kelly, Lawrenceburg; Erin Miller, Georgetown; Megan Robinson, Louisville; Victoria Votaw, Georgetown; Kalena Roark, Georgetown; Alyshia Powell, Winchester; Peyton Blanton, Georgetown; Elyssa Carmony, Independence; Ethan Ellington, Williamstown; Sarina Gasser, Cynthiana; Codell Gibson IV, Paris; Delaney Wright, Union; and Amanda Yeager, Georgetown.
The Toyota Motor Manufacturing Scholarship Program was established in 2002 to commemorate the production of Toyota’s 10 millionth vehicle in North America. Scholarship recipients are selected based on academic record, demonstrated leadership, participation in school and community activities, honors, work experience, outside appraisals and a statement of goals and aspirations.
■ Rosa Parks Elementary has been named a winner of the first annual EBie Awards, a new nationwide juried competition that honors existing buildings that have been retrofitted for sustainability and have made green improvements. Rosa Parks was named a winner in the “Reformed Gas Guzzler” category. this award recognizes the building with the highest percentage of energy savings. the other winning buildings are located throughout the country: new York City; Detroit; Dallas; San Antonio; Santa Monica, Calif.; Seattle; and Edison and West Caldwell, N.J.
Rosa Parks was honored for drastically reducing its energy usage by setting air dampers, heat pumps and centralized pumps and using computers to automatically turn off lights when not in use. After a year of implementing these changes, the school’s Energy Star score rose to 86 points, and the school saved 47 percent more energy.
■ Eastern Kentucky University student Brittany D. Neaves of Mount Sterling has been selected to serve on the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society’s 2012-14 Council of Students.
Established in 2010, Phi Kappa Phi’s Council of Students acts as an advisory panel for the society. the group is composed of two student vice presidents from each of the society’s five regions. Two members of the council will be elected by their peers at the society’s convention Aug. 10-11 in St. Louis to be voting members of Phi Kappa Phi’s national board of directors.
A senior majoring in accounting, Neaves was initiated into Phi Kappa Phi in 2012 at EKU and serves as a student vice president for the university’s Phi Kappa Phi chapter. as a member of the 2012-14 council, Neaves will represent the interests of students in the society’s southeastern region.
Neaves is in her second semester with Dean Dorton Allen Ford in Lexington as an accounting co-op student.
■ For a third straight year, Paul Laurence Dunbar High School won the quiz bowl at the National Beta Club’s annual senior convention. the latest team included Athena Kern, Grant Boggess, Valerie Sarge and John Luan.
Three of these students also captured top honors in the individual competitions they entered: Athena in English, Grant in social studies and Valerie in math. Classmate Vania Ma placed first in Spanish, and Alice Liu was fourth in the pencil-drawing category. the 2012 national convention ran June 27-30 in Greensboro, N.C.
■ Fayette County’s School for the Creative and Performing Arts is among four programs statewide designated as gifted education model service delivery options.
The Kentucky Advisory Council for Gifted and Talented Education cited SCAPA’s outstanding and innovative practices in providing appropriate educational services for students who excel in art, music, dance, drama and creative writing. the honorary designation was based on program goals, overall planning, instructional strategies, student outcomes, procedures for assessing and evaluating, and building/district/family supports.
■ the Lexington Catholic High School choir’s two-week trip to Europe in June included concerts in Vienna and Salzburg in Austria, as well as a performance at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, a concert with Italian teenagers in Rome and an impromptu song for Pope Benedict XVI during a papal audience at the Vatican.
A record 22 students from the choir program, under the direction of Adam Beeken, were selected for the Kentucky All-State Choir competition, and the class of 2012 earned more than $300,000 in music scholarships for college.
Appointments/new hires
■ new principals have been selected to lead three Fayette County public schools where administrators are retiring this year. Jimmy Brehm will become principal at Garden Springs Elementary, Michael Price will take the helm at Breckinridge Elementary and Greg Quenon will leave the principalship at Tates Creek Middle to fill the same role at Henry Clay High School.
The retiring principals are Karen Borders at Garden Springs, Karen Smith Haskins at Breckinridge and John Nochta at Henry Clay.
■ Retired Army Lt. Col. Brett Morris has been named director of admissions at Eastern Kentucky University.
Morris has served as interim director of admissions since October and as associate director for veterans affairs in the university’s Student Outreach and Transition Office since February 2010. From 1999 to 2004, Morris was professor and chair of military science at Eastern — the final duty assignment in his 24 years of active duty.
Under his leadership as associate director for veterans affairs, EKU earned national accolades for its commitment to serving veterans. In 2010 and 2011, EKU earned No. 1 and No. 2 national rankings, respectively, among the nation’s four-year colleges and universities from Military Times EDGE magazine for its commitment to helping military veterans further their education. the university has also been recognized by G.I. Jobs magazine as a “Military Friendly School” for the past three years.
Morris served as the director of the National Remembrance Roll call 2011, an event he spearheaded to remember the service members who lost their lives in the global war on terror. He is a member of the National Association of Veterans Processing Administrators and is the Veterans Knowledge Community Representative for the association’s Region III — Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in advertising from Texas Tech University and master’s degree in national security affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. A graduate of the Army Command and General Staff College and the Army War College Strategist program, he is pursuing an Educational Leadership and Policy Studies doctoral degree at EKU.