Heinlein Society Awards Scholarships

Heinlein Society logoThe Heinlein Society announced on Robert Heinlein’s 109th birthday, July 7, the winners of its three annual $1,000 undergraduate scholarships: Elias Anderson, Carson Butler, and Charles Hanson.

Elias Anderson is a repeat winner from 2015; the first ever multi-year winner. He is enrolled at St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania as a sophomore majoring in Engineering and Mathematics, He hopes to pursue a career in the space industry.

Carson Bulter is the inaugural winner of the Virginia Heinlein Memorial Scholarship for a woman undergraduate major in a STEM subject. She will be attending the University of Virginia’s College of Arts and Sciences as a freshman, majoring in Aerospace Engineering. She envisions herself working with NASA in the future, and has already taken an eight-week online course as a NASA Virginia Aerospace Science and Technology Scholar, as well as a resident course at Langley Research Center.

Charles Hanson is the first scholarship recipient from outside the United States.  He is enrolled as a freshman at the University of Alberta, majoring in Mathematics. He plans to declare a second major in astrophysics when he has the requisite credits to do so. His dream is to become an astronaut, and last year he attended Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama and has been invited back to attend the Advanced Space Camp.

The winners’ checks will be mailed on August 1. For further details, including the recipients’ schools and majors, see The Heinlein Society Scholarship Program.

The entries were evaluated by a committee composed of Dr. Pauline Bennett, Dr. Marie Guthrie, Dr. Keith Kato, Dr. Jerry Pournelle, Geo Rule, Michael Sheffield, and Betsey Wilcox.  A total of 81 entries were submitted, and the committee commented several times during the evaluation process about the difficulty of selecting the Top-10, let alone the Top-3.

[Thanks to Keith Kato for the story.]