Kristin Gonzalez: My Undergraduate Achiever Scholarship!

I am a student at the University Missouri- St. Louis and I am a part of the Joint Engineering Program with Washington University in St. Louis. I plan to study Mechanical Engineering to later become a design engineer for a golf club company. I am also on the golf team here at UMSL. I love my sport and have always grown up giving back to golf. Since the eighth grade I had been volunteering with Camp Shriver, a sports camp for the mentally handicapped. I was a counselor in that camp and I was able to teach these young adults how to swim for the first time as well as how to swing a golf club. Once I got into high school I noticed how girls were under appreciated in the sport and would rarely get the amount of attention that the boys would get. Because of that, I created the PYTees, a girls club within the First Tee of Miami that gave the girls a place to get the attention they needed, whether it was help on the golf course or help in school they received the help they needed. I decided on Mechanical Engineering after looking up what major I needed to get a degree in to be eligible to work for a golf club company as a design engineer; my major is just one other way I decided to give back to the sport that shaped who I am today. 

This scholarship will be used to pay for my tuition in the fall. The scholarship was very much needed seeing that my grandmother past away last fall and my parents were left with many of the hospital bills and had to pay for part of her funeral. My parents are short on money and this scholarship was just a blessing to my family and I. ​