FHS’s McFall earns 4-year $20k Rotary scholarship
Recent Farragut High School graduate Esther McFall was among four Rotary Club of Knoxville scholarship recipients honored during the organization’s Tuesday, June 7, regular meeting.
McFall, along with recent Powell High School graduate Regan Wright (winner of the Townes L. Osborn Scholarship) and recent Grace Christian Academy graduate Noah Bruhin each received a four-year $20,000 scholarship, while the organization awarded the $2,000 Robert and Diana Samples Community School of the Arts Scholarship to recent West High graduate Joshua Washington, according to a Rotary Club of Knoxville press release.
McFall graduated from Farragut High School with a 3.97 GPA and a 29 on the ACT. She plans to attend the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, where she will study environmental science. McFall’s family has spent a lot of time enjoying nature, and she is interested in clean air and water projects and preserving safe habitats for wildlife, the release stated.
She is the ninth of 10 children. Two of her older siblings were awarded Rotary college scholarships in Aiken, South Carolina and her father recently retired from the Department of Energy after 40 years of employment.
Additionally, McFall is described as being “very handy around her house and neighborhood,” the release continued. “She takes care of her family’s and her neighbor’s yards and she recently replaced her father’s car’s passenger side view mirror.”
McFall also has been actively involved in youth ministry at her church and at church camps and has devoted many hours of community service to her local library and her church’s food pantry. McFall was her school’s girls’ cross country team captain, and she has been involved in a stagecraft class that allowed her to create theatrical space designs.
Jennifer Sepaniak, who chairs RCK’s Scholarship Awards Committee, said, “This year we reviewed 31 scholarship applications.
“We are very pleased to be able to award scholarships to such worthy young people.”
Founded in 1915, RCK is among the oldest and largest Rotary Clubs in Tennessee.
Club members were instrumental in the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and currently sponsor several park projects. The club is also the steward of the Rotary Foundation of Knoxville, which provides for college scholarships and special projects.
Rotary International was the world’s first service club, started in Chicago in 1905. More than 1.2 million members in more than 35,000 clubs in 200 countries volunteer their time and talent to further the Rotary motto “Service Above Self.”
Clubs are nonpolitical, nonreligious, and open to all cultures, races, and creeds.
