Junior Selected For Global Student Leaders Summit
Shaker Heights High School junior Max Markey is one of 16 high school students nationwide to receive the 2015 EF Global Citizen Scholarship, an all-expense-paid, 12-day immersive travel experience sponsored by EF Tours.
The scholarship recipients will travel to London, Paris, and Davos, Switzerland, in June to attend EF’s Global Student Leaders Summit, where students will collaborate with one another to design solutions and innovations for the education field. They will also hear keynote speeches from Sir Ken Robinson, one of the world’s foremost thought leaders on creativity and innovation, and activist and author Nikhil Goyal.
Max’s trip grew out of the selection of Superintendent Gregory C. Hutchings, Jr., as one of three Ohio superintendents to attend a nine-day professional learning tour of Finland and Switzerland in June. Because of his participation in this tour, Hutchings was invited to extend the opportunity to Shaker students to apply for the EF scholarship. Juniors serving on the Superintendent’s Advisory Committee were eligible to apply.
For this year’s scholarship challenge, students were required to submit a video or essay discussing their vision for the future of education, drawing upon their own experience. A panel of global education experts reviewed hundreds of submissions before selecting the scholarship recipients.
In his video submission, Max spoke about his growing interest in race and social relations as a leader with the Student Group on Race Relations (SGORR). The innovation he proposed was to develop local and global youth conferences on potentially divisive topics, in order to compare and contrast differing viewpoints with a goal toward finding common ground. View Max’s video essay.
“I applied for this scholarship because it is in line with what I’d like to do career-wise,” says Max. “I’d like to get into International Relations. I’ve always been interested in the differences and similarities between other cultures and our own.”
Max looks forward to sharing what he has learned about how other nations educate their youth when he returns. He says, “The Superintendent’s Advisory Council is really the perfect platform for disseminating any information that we may be able to apply.”
Posted: Monday, March 2, 2015