I am excited to accept the 2023 Joseph James Morelli Legacy Scholarship to help pay for college! Your scholarship will allow me the opportunity to live in the Engineering Honors Residential Learning Community (RLC) dorm on campus with other Honors College engineering students. I have already been accepted to the Honors College and pre-Engineering at Auburn University. This community will aid my transition from advanced placement and dual enrollment classes to the rigor of engineering courses. I will have direct access to an engineering advisor and engineering student mentor during my year in the RLC. By providing a support system to help me be a successful student, I will further develop my good study habits and connect with the engineering community on campus. I will take honors classes with the same RLC engineering students. By providing a small group experience, I will have enhanced in-class instruction. With dyslexia, small class sizes will significantly benefit my learning experience. It will offer me more accessibility to my professors when I have questions about the material I am studying. I will be less distracted in these small classes, which will mirror the size of classes I had in high school, so I do not feel lost in a class of 200 students. The RLC also provides out-of-class activities in cohorts of 20 students, each focused on engineering topics. By being in Engineering Honors RLC, I will have priority registration for classes in the Spring. I will be able to get the best professors based on their teaching style and their willingness to work with my accommodations for my dyslexia.  In addition to my dyslexia, I have two extenuating circumstances that could affect my attending college. My father has cancer and is the primary source of my family’s income. He will have eight weeks of daily radiation beginning in June, and I worry about how it could affect our family financially. I know I must let go and let God take care of this, but I still worry.  My other extenuating circumstance is my family will have two children in college, my brother and me. There will be at least a two-year overlap of our time in college, which will further strain my family’s finances. I want to come out of college with the least debt possible, so your scholarship will be a huge blessing!

Read Austin High senior turns challenge of dyslexia into motivation and inspires girls STEM, a Yahoo News article about Reagan.