Pace Academy Seniors Receive Prestigious Scholarships

Patch Staff Report

When Pace Academy seniors Osei Avril and Kal Golde begin college in the fall of 2014, they’ll join an elite group of students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Georgia, respectively. Avril has been named a Gates Millennium Scholar (GMS), while Golde has received the University of Georgia’s premier undergraduate scholarship, the Foundation Fellowship.

Avril is one of 1,000 Gates Millennium Scholars selected from more than 52,000 applicants – one of the most competitive candidate groups in the program’s history. The program provides minority students good-through-graduation scholarships to use at the college or university of their choice. Gates Millennium Scholars who pursue graduate studies in the fields of computer science, education, engineering, library science, mathematics, public health or science may be eligible for GMS fellowship funding through the master’s and doctoral levels.

GMS also provides programs and activities to assist Gates Millennium Scholars as they develop as leaders. Programs include the GMS Freshmen Leadership Conference, academic empowerment services, graduate school planning and a mentoring program.  

Avril enrolled at Pace in the ninth grade from Atlanta’s Ron Clark Academy and has been an active participant in the school community. He was named a Sanford B. Orkin Scholar in the ninth grade and was a sophomore Arts Laureate. He is a three-year member of the Pace chorus and the varsity football team, as well as a four-year veteran of the varsity track and field team. Avril is a Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Scholar, a member of the National Honor Society, a National Achievement Scholar and an AP Scholar.

The University of Georgia’s Foundation Fellowship offers a stipend that approximates the cost of attendance and provides a post-first-year Maymester study abroad program at Oxford University, individual travel-study grants, spring group travel-study, research and academic conference grants, dinner seminars with some of the University’s best minds and a mentoring program that matches Fellows with professors who share their interests. In the 2012-2013 academic year, only 26 first-year students received the Fellowship, one of whom was a member of Pace Academy’s Class of 2013.

Golde has been recognized for his academic achievement through membership in the Cum Laude Society, the National Honor Society and the Orkin Honor Society. He also received a Georgia Certificate of Merit (awarded to the top five percent of a given class), and is a National Merit Semifinalist, an AP Scholar with distinction and one of Pace’s two 2014 STAR Students.

Golde received the Harvard Book Prize his junior year, which recognizes “an outstanding junior student who serves the school admirably in an area of honor and responsibility.” His sophomore year, he received the Mimi Ann Deas Award for excellence in scholarship and class spirit. In addition, Golde is a member of the varsity swimming and tennis teams, serves as a peer leader for ninth-grade students and participates in Pace’s championship debate program.