The Gakio-Walton Scholars Program was launched this fall, as new Gakio-Walton Scholars were brought to Choate with financial aid and stipends to cover books and travel expenses. Six students from under-represented areas in Africa, the Middle East, India and the USA are currently enrolled in the Gakio-Walton program. The students are Aisha Kibwana ’08, Thatcher Mweu ’11 and Martin Mutonga ’09 from Kenya; Shelby Tully ’11 from Arizona; Marco Walton ’10 from Nevada; and Jennifer Kim ’08 from Illinois. Four years ago, the Walton Family Foundation gave $11.7 million in an endowment to honor Wilson Gakio, a classmate of Benjamin S. Walton ’92. Gakio died from a heart ailment at Vassar.
The application process for the program is lengthy. Prospective students must take the SSAT, demonstrate proficiency in English, and participate in a 30-minute interview. Director of Community Service Mary Pashley said, “It is a highly selective program.” Of the fourteen students who applied last year, only two were selected. She also said that recruitment efforts focused on schools she knew could produce students prepared to succeed at Choate. As knowledge of the program begins to spread, she expects the number of applicants to rise. Ms. Pashley works with alumni Pete Meachum ’91, Anne Muragu ’91, and Erin Brennan ’93 to successfully recruit the Gakio-Walton Scholars. The program looks to bring some of the most talented individuals to Choate to pursue a quality secondary school education.
The students accepted to the program have to make a large adjustment to their new culture at Choate and in the U.S. For students from outside the US, the change can be especially daunting because of a language barrier. The primary language spoken in Kenya is Swahili. In order to make the transition a little bit easier, the international Gakio-Walton scholars were required to attend a full Choate Summer Session, which would give them time to adjust to boarding-school life in New England before having to face the rigors of the academic year. James Yanelli, Jill Atkinson, and Ms. Pashley serve as advisers to the Gakio-Walton scholars. The advisers’ goal is to help the students through their transition and to monitor their development.
Although classes are challenging, all of the scholars have found success on some level. Martin Mutonga ’09, a new Gakio-Walton scholar, said, “My school prepared me well.” However, he still found Choate “crazy in terms of work” and showed the signs of fatigue that many juniors display at this time of year. Though Mutonga’s courses are going well, he says that he is slow in writing and struggles to perfect every sentence.
The program seeks to expand in coming years. By 2011, Mrs. Pashley hopes to have enrolled twelve students under the Gakio-Walton Scholars Program—four from the U.S, four from Africa, and four from the Middle East. She also hopes to find new students, preferably from the same region, to fill the positions that are left by graduating Gakio-Walton Scholars. She has already selected some new recipients of the scholarship and looks forward to their arrival next year.
Ms. Pashley said that, though the program seeks to bring students from underrepresented regions and give them a good education, another purpose of the program is “for the student body to understand more about their [the Gakio-Walton Scholars’] situations.” Benjamin S. Walton, the son of the endowment donor, fondly remembers the conversations about life in Kenya that he experienced with classmate Wilson Gakio, and it is Walton’s hope that such conversations will continue to happen at Choate.
The new Gakio-Walton Scholars, from left Martin Mutonga ’09, Shelby Tulley’ 11, Marco Walton’ 10, and Thatcher Mweu ’11. PHOTO/TALENTED Gordon Armour
