Valley students enjoy success

Valley Life editor

A Palmer student was recently named a National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalist.

Teressa Van Diest, a homeschool student, earned the honor for her performance on the 2003 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. There are 16,000 high school seniors honored as semifinalists around the country, and approximately 90 percent of them are expected to become finalists.

Approximately half of the finalists are selected as National Merit Scholars, who share $33.9 million in scholarships.

Van Diest spent her summer vacation studying the stars, using physics and mathematics to write computer programs based on those observations, as part of a grueling six-week summer science camp in California.

"It was very challenging, but the feeling that you were in a scientific community where everyone was collaborating on a big project was incredible," Van Diest, a student with the IDEA program, said in August. "I'm very interested in science, especially astronomy and physics.

"I like studying things that we are right on the verge of discovering," Van Diest said. "Like dark matter and dark energy. We know they are supposed to exist, but we can't find them yet. That kind of stuff really interests me."

KARI DUAME, of Palmer High School, was named a Commended Scholar by the National Merit Scholarship Program. She was one of 34,000 students nationwide to earn the designation.

ROGER SWINGLE III, of Wasilla, was recently awarded the Rensselaer Medal at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The Rensselaer Medal is awarded to distinguished scholars in science and mathematics. To be honored, a student must be a junior and be considered their school's single most promising science and math student. Each medalist who is accepted and enrolls at Rensselaer receives a scholarship of $60,000, payable in four yearly awards of $15,000.

Rensselaer is the nation's oldest technological university, offering degrees in engineering, information technologies, architecture, management and humanities and social sciences. The Rensselaer Medal is the oldest prize of its kind in the country.

ALINA MARIE KUEHLER, of Wasilla, was awarded a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from Texas Tech University during summer commencement exercises in Lubbock, Texas.