Student Receives Georgia Woman of the Year Scholarship Award

VALDOSTA -- The Georgia Commission on Women’s Georgia Woman of the Year Committee recently honored Valdosta State University student Deborah Stone as a recipient of a $1,000 educational scholarship grant.

Stone was one of four college women honored with the scholarship throughout the state. She was selected based on academic excellence, leadership skills and career objectives.

“I recently discovered that I reached the cap on my Pell grant, which means I'm losing thousands of dollars per semester,” said Stone, a native of Nashville, Ga. “By my calculations, I will be paying for my last one or two semesters out of pocket. Receiving this scholarship helps a lot in that area.”

A junior computer science major, Stone was nominated for the scholarship by Dr. Krishnendu Roy, assistant professor in the Department of Math and Computer Science.

“I nominated her for this scholarship because of her academic accomplishments as well as her leadership roles and community service, particularly with helping to organize the computing summer camps in 2011 and 2012 as well as the 2012 teacher workshop,” said Roy.

In addition to her work with the computing summer camps, Stone recently taught a series of computer science camps for middle school and high school students through the university’s Continuing Education program.

“It was a very enlightening experience and made me realize that I thoroughly enjoy teaching kids,” Stone said. “At the end of the Continuing Ed camps, I was approached by Valwood's headmaster and asked if I would be interested in working with them to incorporate some computer science into their curriculum. This is now in the works. (Nothing is final yet). I think it will be an excellent way to get kids interested in computer science, especially girls, as there is clear lack of females in this industry.”

Upon receiving her bachelor’s degree next year, Stone plans to teach programming.

“I really enjoy it and I think, based on past events, I can teach it in a way that it is easy to understand.”

The Georgia Commission on Women’s Georgia Woman of the Year Committee established an awards program for women attending Georgia colleges and universities in 1998. The committee presents scholarship grants of $1,000 each year in honor of the Georgia Woman of the Year. Over $80,000 in awards has been distributed since the program began.