USGBC-LI honors five Long Island Students with scholarships

At its Innovation and Design Awards ceremony on October 30, USGBC-LI honored five local students with scholarships of $1,500 each. "The winners were chosen by a committee of four chapter members who each read all the applications," said Lauren Elizabeth Graham, the co-chair of the Emerging Green Builders committee. "Each application was discussed and debated by a group, and the winners were chosen by consensus.  We considered all the materials that were sent, but the essays where the students spoke about themselves were arguably the most important."  "The winners demonstrated cohesion and clarity in their career interests, displayed a social consciousness about environmental issues, as well as a potential for leadership and service," said Graham. The winners were Stacy Shalla, an architecture student from Centerport who studies at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT); Matthew Feis, from Meville, who is an architecture student at Syracuse University; Rajiv Jayawardena, a Sri Lanka native who studies architecture at NYIT; David Kohanim, a business management student at SUNY-Farmingdale who hails from Wantagh; and Taylor Goulding, an Oyster Bay native who studies economics and managerial studies at Rice University in Houston. Funding for the scholarship program was obtained through the sponsors of USGBC-LI's 2008 Building Green Long Island gala. The organization hopes to replicate the success of the program in 2009.