Congratulations Telluride Rotary Scholarship Recipients
The Telluride Rotary Club is proud to award $23,000 in scholarships this year plus an additional $500 for our Service Above Self awards. Many thanks to our Scholarship Committee chair Lauren Bloemsma and these Rotary members who served on the committee: Jim Austin, Marilyn Branch, Sarah Holbrooke, and Nancy Pietri.
Pictured here with club president Kate Wadley at center are THS seniors Caitlyn McKillop and Adam Szigeti who earned our club’s 2026 Service Above Self Award. These $250 prizes go directly to the two deserving students recognized for their volunteerism.
This year our scholarships include two new John Hopkins Fine Arts Scholarships per a bequest of the late Telluride Rotary Club member and artist John Hopkins. The two $4000 John Hopkins Fine Arts Scholarships went to Winter Jacobson who will attend the University of Oregon pursuing a degree in fine arts, and Hannah Jurecki who will explore multiple interests through the Exploratory Studies program at Colorado State University this fall.
The $500 John Micetic Athletic Scholarship named after former mayor and longtime Rotarian John Micetic is awarded to Madeline McNamara pursuing a pre-law degree at Colgate University.
The $1000 Endeavor scholarship funded by longtime Rotarians Roger and Sandy Wickham provides tuition assistance to a student entering a vocational or trade program. It goes to Tatiana Gaviota Ramos who will pursue a certified nursing assistant certificate at Santa Barbara City College.
Nine Telluride Rotary Club Academic Scholarships were awarded based on merit and need to those students exemplifying Rotarian values. The largest $5,000 scholarship is awarded to Caitlyn McKillop who graduated Summa Cum Laude with Latin Honors. She will pursue a psychology degree at the University of Oregon.
Scholarships for $2,000 each go to Zephyr Basham pursuing a business management degree at Montana State University, and Abigail Vidal who will study kinesiology at Colorado Mesa University. Scholarships for $1,000 go to Hugh Hatcher studying engineering at Harvard University, Lucia Young studying biology at UCLA, and Jacob Sharp who will study chemical engineering at CU Boulder. Scholarships for $500 go to Alison Gutierrez Sanchez, CJ Horning and Langston Silbergeld.
You may be wondering, is Rotary Youth Exchange happening? Telluride Rotary Club has a long tradition of hosting high school students from other countries, and sending local students to study abroad. Because of the Covid-19 global pandemic, however, no Rotary clubs have been able to host or send exchange students since spring of 2020. The program will resume for the 2022-23 school year, and applications for the program are being accepted now through December 2021. For complete info for high school students applying to the program, or for potential host families, visit 
Last June 21, our club celebrated the start of a new Rotary year, and President Roger Young passed the torch to 2023-24 Club President Kaitlyn James. 
In the Rotary year of 2022-23, our club's main International project involved supporting a daycare center in Slovakia, near the Ukraine border, that is dedicated to helping children and their mothers who are Ukrainian war refugees. We donated $4000 to help grow the small but impactful Radost Center for Mothers and Children in Kosice, Slovakia.