Last week, RHS held its annual College Week activities including daily trivia questions and door decorating. New to the festivities this year was the opportunity for students to apply for a variety of scholarships posted in the mall and on classroom doors around the school.

“With all of our events, we’re always trying to find ways to take it to that next step or that next level and try to help out students or staff or the community,” assistant principal Mr. Wescott said. “This was just an idea that we came up with as a team here at Rochester.”

The RHS staff hoped to set up the scholarships in a way that was convenient for students and grabbed their attention.

“The goal was to just create more awareness for scholarship opportunities, and we figured that if every teacher has a scholarship on their door, every student has, on average, six classes,” Mr. Wescott said. “A couple kids go to OTEC, but hopefully every student will come in contact with at least six different scholarships.”

Overall, Mr. Wescott considered the new scholarship opportunities to be a successful addition to College Week.

“Any time we do any kind of program that promotes something that’s good for kids is a success,” said Mr. Wescott. “So even if we would have rolled over the same thing we did last year, I think that would be a success because I think that creates awareness and just opportunity for teachers and students to decorate doors [and] talk about that higher education.”

Mr. Wescott is thinking of expanding the number of scholarships and offering students an opportunity to apply for them at school in future College Weeks. This year’s scholarships will still be available around RHS and on the school website for students who are looking to begin or continue their applications.

“I think the hardest step for students is to try to apply for that first one [scholarship], because it’s new,” said Mr. Wescott. “But I think that the application process is similar to scholarships, so once you kind of get used to doing one, hopefully it makes students more comfortable to do more.”