Class of '63 presents Scholarship

This year's (2015) $500.00 scholarship was made possible by donations we received from classmates during the year of our 50th Anniversary Reunion. Last year, thanks to the generosity of two classmates, three $500.00  scholarships  were presented in the name of our class.

Thank You! to all scholarship donors for your generosity and community spirit.

EPISD Education Foundation awards $57,000 in scholarships to graduating 58 seniors

The EPISD Education Foundation this spring awarded the Class of 2015 with 58 scholarships totaling $57,000. El Paso High’s Scott Spivey, who received the highest rating on his application by the Foundation reviewers, was awarded the Board of Managers Scholarship. Students earning scholarship will be attending colleges and universities from UTEP and UT Austin to Brown University and MIT. The 58 scholarships also includes scholarships sponsored by the Burges High School Class of 1994 and the Irvin High School Class of 1963. All scholarships awards are $1,000 with the exception of the $500 scholarships from the Burges Class of 1994 and Irvin Class of 1963.

Scholarships provided through the EPISD Education Foundation are made possible through the generous support of our corporate donors through the Community Campaign for Excellence, our employees contributing to the Employee Giving Campaign and the participants of our events. El Paso Electric Company, the Community Campaign Honorary Chair for the 2014-15 school year, kicked off the campaign with a $25,000 contribution.

The following students received Foundation scholarships:

 

Burges graduate Esther Sanchez received the $500 Burges Class of 1994 Scholarship and Giovanni Paz received the $500 Irvin Class of 1963 Scholarship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Irvin High School Protest

On Sept. 21-22, Northeast El Paso took the brunt of a downpour generated from Hurricane Odile. On Monday, Sept. 22, a woman drowned when floodwaters swept her car into the drainage canal near Vulcan and Diana streets. At least one emergency shelter was set up at Magoffin Middle School. Several areas of Irvin High School were flooded, including the recently renovated cafeteria.  On those two days nearly half the students were kept home by parents or were unable to make it to campus.  (Information compiled from KVIA.com and the Irvin website http://irvinhs.ning.com.)

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(Photo courtesy of KVIA

 

 

Three Scholarships Awarded by Class of '63

Pictured from left to right: Raul Alvarez, Mitzi Martinez, Ilse Delgado, Linda Oatman (Cox) and Klaus Hille. Not pictured: Scholarship recipient Stephane Flores and photographer Ernest Jiron.      

 

           Thanks to generous donations from several of our classmates, the Class of ’63 was able to present three $500.00 scholarships to deserving Irvin High School students. The scholarships were presented at the school’s Awards and Scholarship Presentation Ceremony on May 27, 2014. The honor of representing our class went to Linda Cox (Oatman), Raul Alvarez, Ernest Jiron and Klaus Hille. The scholarship recipients were Ilse Delgado, Stephane Flores and Mitzi Martinez.

            The three scholarship recipients were selected from eleven applicants. All three students  submitted well written applications. They have outstanding academic records and are very involved in community service. They have worthy, well thought out goals, have already  demonstrated a tenacious ability to overcome challenges and to accomplish what they set out to do. One of the students plans to study Business Administration and two are planning to study Biology/Medicine. All three intend to give back to their community after establishing their career.

            The scholarship funds are managed by the El Paso ISD Education Foundation. Once the student is registered at a university, the funds are transferred to the registrar of that institution.

            The members of the scholarship selection committee were Linda Cox (Oatman), Gayle Dollarhide (Thompson), Frank James, Ernest Jiron, Raul Alvarez and Klaus Hille. Special thanks to Linda for obtaining the scholarship selection guidelines and the student applications from the El Paso ISD Education Foundation. She guided the committee in the selection process and coordinated the committee’s efforts with the requirements of the Foundation. Also, special thanks to Gayle for reserving an excellent meeting place for the committee to accomplish its work.

            Selecting the scholarship recipients was a very difficult task. All eleven applicants were deserving of special recognition and financial assistance. The task was made a little easier when two committee members donated a total of $1,000.00 in addition to the original amount of $500.00 that was budgeted for a single scholarship. As a result, the Class of ’63 was able to present three $500.00 scholarships. It is the hope of the scholarship selection committee to again be able to present at least one $500.00 scholarship next year.

Rocket Proud!

 

 

Students attend orientation for UTEP-Irvin High School research collaboration

 

 

TEA approves science, technology, engineering and math approach at Irvin High

 

The STEM Academy project could make Irvin more attractive to students who might look at academic programs elsewhere, he said. But including the entire campus means its entire student body of 1,600 receives those advantages.

The district this summer also approved magnet status for the school so that beginning next year students from campuses outside the Irvin feeder pattern can apply to attend the campus.

Current freshman and sophomore students will be the first to graduate from Irvin after completing requirements for one of the STEM degree pathways.

With a larger campus come bigger challenges for meeting that goal than those faced by typical STEM academies. Unsurprisingly, the largest is funding.

Before 2011, schools had the opportunity to apply for competitive grants through the TEA to support the STEM academies. Transmountain Early College High School, El Paso ISD's first such campus, also received support from groups like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.

Although the school receives advising and professional development from the public-private partnership Educate Texas, when Irvin was approved for a new academy last year by the TEA it was essentially an unfunded designation.

"We didn't get any money for our 1,600 pupil campus," said Irvin STEM coordinator Oscar Rico.

Campus administrators have found alternatives to those large grants, reallocating some funding for the school and seeking other assistance from the community.

Irvin is aiming to provide laptops or other devices to each of its students beginning with current underclassmen.

Two hundred devices were purchased with district funding and another 600 laptops for freshman and sophomore students will be obtained through a computer repair program at state prisons.

And the school is planning on eventually offering many of its technology-related courses in a new wing to be rebuilt at a cost of about $250,000 as soon as funding from the district is made available.

The STEM project is receiving support from local corporate and higher education entities through a panel of advisory partners.

Willy Silva, vice president of community outreach at El Paso Electric, said the company has deemed itself a STEM company. El Paso Electric employs about 70 engineers of all types, he said.

"Everything we do here is associated with one of those fields," Silva said. "You name it, we have it."

He said building on science and engineering education at the high school level would not only help steer more students toward those fields at the university level but also could help improve dropout rates and engagement at public schools.

Educators at the campus also say the STEM requirements could boost the number of girls studying math and engineering at the high school -- fields where female students are typically underrepresented at the college and university level.

Biotechnology instructor Jaci Queen has seen the number of girls in her classes rise dramatically since starting at Irvin.

She said the new degree plans could expose even more girls to those fields who never would have considered a career in science.

"This does introduce these fields to a more diverse population -- both male and female and all ethnicities and races and all backgrounds," she said.

The switch to a STEM-oriented campus has also meant changes in the classrooms of instructors teaching what are traditionally considered liberal arts, social studies, literature and foreign languages.

Geography teacher Ruth Bohlin, during the recent Constitution week, had her students arrange desks in groups of five or six and, instead of receiving a lecture on the document, present and defend rankings of important American values.

"It's kind of allowing the students some ownership over their own teaching and learning, giving them opportunities to teach each other," she said.

Those methods aren't new to Bohlin, who has embraced the more project-oriented, hands-on curriculum pushed by the STEM model.

"It was kind of exciting, it kind of made me think this is where I want to be then," she said. "To my knowledge, nowhere else in El Paso is a teacher or an educator given so much liberty to teach the way they want."

Sharp, the Irvin principal, said he was grateful the campus's teachers have been open to embracing the STEM project.

"We can't get rid of an art teacher, we can't get rid of another person because we're going to STEM," she said. "We have to transition art into something that can do more with art whether that's have our art teacher do more things like a digital art or something. We've got to have our staff be very flexible, be very willing to change."

Andrew Kreighbaum may be reached at 546-6127.