Student news: National Merit semifinalists, college news and more in Pine, Richland

National Merit semifinalists

Pine-Richland High School seniors Brendan Anderson, John Faber, Joshua Pazin, Rebecca Peng and Samuel Stella have been named National Merit Scholarship Corporation semifinalists. The students are among 16,000 semifinalists in the United States. They will have the opportunity to qualify for finalist status and compete for National Merit scholarships.

Freshman named to orchestra

Grace Welsh, a resident of Wexford, was recently named to the 2020 Bob Jones University Symphony Orchestra. Welsh is a freshman majoring in cross-cultural service at BJU.

Auditions are open to all students at the university, regardless of academic major.

The 43-member symphony has a long, rich tradition of presenting masterworks from the orchestral repertoire. Students also have the opportunity to explore a wide variety of chamber works, opera, musical theatre, symphonic pops and sacred music literature.

Local student enrolled at Marietta

When in-person classes began for the 2020 fall semester, Marietta College welcomed approximately 375 new students who are studying in one of the more than 50 majors or have chosen to not declare a major.

Wesley Byrd of Wexford is a graduate of Pine-Richland High School.

Located in Marietta, Ohio, at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers, Marietta College is a four-year liberal arts college.

Girl Scout Gold Award

Charlotte Menke, a senior at Pine-Richland High School, has earned the highest achievement in Girl Scouting, the Gold Award.

This award, presented to Menke by Girl Scouts Western Pennsylvania, recognizes girls in grades nine through 12 who demonstrate extraordinary leadership through sustainable and measurable Take Action projects that address important community needs.

As a Girl Scout member for 13 years, Menke is a Girl Scout Ambassador of Troop 94. She was supported in her Gold Award effort by Leslie Straub, Barb Staresinic, Peer-2-Peer, Multiplying Good, the Pine-Richland administration and her family. Her Gold Award project began in November 2019 and was completed in August 2020.

“For this project, I addressed teen isolation and loneliness by pairing high school mentors with middle schoolers to create a support network,” Menke said. “This involved advertising the program, distributing applications, interviewing candidates, grouping mentors with mentees and organizing field trips. Bigs-2-Mids brings students together. This year in particular, with the pandemic causing everyone to stay home and away from their friends, school, activities and sports, my team and I turned to Zoom, mailed postcards to homes, and kept the dialogue going online. I leveraged social media to raise awareness of suicide prevention and spread the word about how to get involved. We grew to 212 new followers on social media platforms.”