In the News: NHS student earns Act Six scholarship at GFU

Oscar Gomez will be the first person in his family to graduate from high school in June and the first to attend college when he moves into his George Fox University dormitory this summer.

Residents of Newberg may not consider the town an urban center, but it is urban enough for a second Newberg High School student in two years to be selected for the Act Six scholarship program at George Fox University.

Oscar Gomez, a senior at Silver School, will attend Fox for the next four years thanks to the program and plans to pursue a degree in electrical engineering. The eldest of six children, he will be the first person in his family to attend college. In fact, in June when he walks across the stage on the grass of Loran Douglas Field, he will be the first person in his family to earn a high school diploma.

The Act Six Leadership and Scholarship Initiative offers full scholarships to students identified as urban leaders from the Portland metropolitan area. Gomez could have opted to attend Warner Pacific College or George Fox and chose the latter because “I’ve met some nice people who have graduated from George Fox.”

Receiving the scholarship was a blessing for Gomez, who only applied for that one. “I got it. Thank God for that. Now I don’t have to worry as much — just maintain school and look forward to college,” he said.

Initially more than 200 applicants sought the scholarship. The pool was winnowed during a three-month competition that included writing numerous essays, attending problem-solving conferences and, eventually, participating in an overnight stay at Fox. All along the students were observed and assessed and their abilities to work well with others were judged.

“I didn’t start high school with that mentality of being a straight-A student,” Gomez said of his grades. “I didn’t think it was possible for me.” At the end of his freshman year he’d only had one B and decided that maybe he could be an A student. Four years later he’s mainly held the line, with only three Bs on his record.

Gomez will major in electrical engineering because the major requires a lot of physics. He’s interested in theoretical physics and would have majored in the discipline if Fox offered it.

His interest in the field of theoretical physics has down-to-earth applications, he explained. As an electrical engineer he will deal with electricity and the means of transporting it. He said he believes those topics will be major areas of research as increasing numbers of people need power.
“It fascinates me; science is awesome,” he said. He traces his love of science back to when he was a small child looking outside his window and wondering how the world worked.

“I see science fiction as something that will eventually get there,” he said. “Science is the engine of prosperity. Everything that we have has been engineered.”

Since the Act Six program’s inception at George Fox in 2007, five groups of ethnically diverse and mostly first-generation, low-income scholars from urban Portland have enrolled at the university. To date, 45 of the 49 scholars originally selected for the program at George Fox are still enrolled or have graduated.

Story: Laurent Bonczijk, Newberg Graphic