Garden Club of Inverness announces scholarship winners

The Garden Club of Inverness announced, with great pleasure, the recipients of its 2013 scholarships. The winners, each of whom will receive a $1,300 scholarship, are Ellen Hanes, Schaumburg; Maya Heidtke, Palatine; and Katelyn Pozniak, Schaumburg.

The first recipient is Maya Heidtke, the daughter of Gail Heidtke of Palatine. She is a graduate of Palatine High School and will be a student at Valparaiso University, in Valparaiso Ind., majoring in civil engineering.

While at Palatine High School, Heidtke was active in cheerleading and gymnastics, worked as a cheerleading coach, and volunteered for her church as a Sunday school and vacation Bible school teacher, and was active in her church youth group.

Heidtke hopes her civil engineering degree will enable her to design buildings that are built efficiently and that meet Leadership in Energy and the Environmental Design specifications. One of Heidtke’s references was from the teacher of her civil engineering and architecture class, who indicated that she had recently designed a home that is LEED certified that is both green and sustainable. Heidtke is currently working on a project involving taking an old warehouse building and converting it into a new energy efficient library.

The second recipient is Katelyn Pozniak, the daughter of John and Kimberly Pozniak of Schaumburg. She is a graduate from James B. Conant High School where she was involved with student government, soccer, volleyball and track. She has also been a Bible Camp counselor, and volunteered in an alzheimer’s assisted living community and at a hospital in outpatient radiology. She has enjoyed growing, maintaining, and harvesting her own and her family’s garden and plans to join the horticulture club at her university this fall.

Pozniak will attend Ohio State University, majoring in environmental engineering. She plans to focus her work on chemistry and hopes to go into a profession that involves designing cleaning products or lawn and garden products that are environmentally friendly while still working effectively.

Our third recipient is Ellen Hanes, daughter of Phillip Hanes and Ann Hanes of Schaumburg. She is a graduate of Conant High School and is currently a student at Harper College, majoring in environmental science and conservation. She has been involved with the newspapers at both Conant and Harper and is a member of the environmental club at Harper. Ellen is a volunteer at the Spring Valley Nature Sanctuary and with Harper Environmental Club where she says that she “genuinely enjoys” brush cutting and removal of those invasive species that we all know and love, as well as collecting and stratifying seeds. She plans to attend Monmouth College in the fall and after graduation hopes to work in a forest preserve, state park or nature sanctuary.

The Garden Club of Inverness offers scholarships to graduating high school seniors, and college and postgraduate students with a demonstrated interest in an environmentally related field, e.g., horticulture, botany, landscape design, agriculture, forestry, conservation, natural resources management, or environmental engineering. Applicants must reside in High School District 211 or in the area served by Barrington High School. The Garden Club has granted many scholarships over the years, and looks forward to continuing its support of such outstanding students as this year’s winners.

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