2017 Scholarships

Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop is proud to announce the winners to the 2017 Scholarship Program!

Following a competitive process with many high-quality applicants with intriguing essays, three students were chosen as the recipients of the 2017 scholarships.With the support of Baen Books and Digital Oilfield Solutions, TVIW will award these deserving students, two undergraduate scholarships and one graduate scholarship, on a merit-basis in the amount of $2500 per recipient.

Graduate Level Scholarship: Margaret Horton

Margaret attended Tulane University for her undergraduate degree in Spanish, but her interest has turned to public health. She has worked with the Texas Department of State Health Services, and provided services for the Consulate General of Mexico in Austin, Texas. She will be starting at Emory University in the fall in public health, with the goal of working at the CDC in Atlanta. Her winning essay can be read here.

Undergraduate Scholarships: Emily Kerns and Rohan Varshney

Emily is a student at the University of North Florida, majoring in Biology, concentrating in Coastal Biology. She has been working in field research with Dr. Matthew Gilg, University of North Florida ecological geneticist. She aspires to be a university professor, to pass on her love for teaching. Her winning essay can be read here.

After attending Stanton College Preparatory School in Jacksonville, FL, as a National Merit Finalist, Rohan has chosen to attend Georgia Institute of Technology in Engineering and possibly Computer Science. His winning essay can be read here.

“HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT  THE MOON
JULY 1969, A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND”
The words on a plaque left on the Moon by Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong.

*********NOTE: Applications for the 2017 Scholarships have now closed. Application Materials are provided for reference information only****************

UNDERGRADUATE APPLICATION                                       GRADUATE APPLICATION

*********NOTE: Applications for the 2017 Scholarships have now closed. Application Materials are provided for reference information only****************

The Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop is a non-profit organization that was created to foster and assist the study, research, and experimentation that can enable human interstellar travel as well as benefit life on Earth. We want to engage and inspire the curiosity in all of us, and making thinking of interstellar travel, and its various disciplines, a common every day subject.

To that goal, and with the generous sponsorship of Digital Oil Solutions and Baen Books, we have created a scholarship program that will provide three scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students. These scholarships are merit based, requiring an essay with the application.

There were two undergraduate scholarships.

There was one graduate scholarship.

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.”
Carl Sagan

We thank all of the students who applied for one of these scholarships. Please consider following TVIW as we help make interstellar missions possible for a future generation to go to the stars! Keep a lookout for scholarships for the 2018-2019 academic year!

pale-blue-dot
Pale Blue Dot image of Earth, taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, 6 billion kilometers away in 1990

“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space