Alaina Washington
Alaina Washington
Alaina Washington
Alaina Washington
Alaina Washington, who just completed her shortened senior year at Ooltewah High School while awaiting formal graduation ceremonies, is an avid flute player and enjoys playing Celtic and Asian music for fun.
For a brief period earlier this spring, though, she might have felt more like playing a note or two of the blues after initially learning she had not been selected as a prestigious Haslam Scholar at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
“I had gotten an email saying I hadn’t been selected,” said Ms.
Washington in relating her initial bad news. “But someone dropped out.”
After indeed ending up as a Haslam Scholar in late April after one or more other initial selectees ended up choosing other college options, she is now excitedly planning to head to Knoxville this fall.
As a result, “Rocky Top” is likely going to be in her music repertoire, too.
Of the 15 selected for the Haslam Scholars Program – which is considered UT’s most prestigious undergraduate academic scholars program and was founded in 2008 with a generous gift from Jimmy and Dee Haslam and Jim and Natalie Haslam – two are from Southeast Tennessee.
The other local honoree among incoming freshmen is Cleveland High graduate Jack Duncan, who was an ESL peer tutor, National Honor Society chapter president and tennis team member. He plans to major in economics and political science, according to the press release put out by UT.
Ms. Washington said she had not initially even considered UT, much less the Haslam Scholars program.
“In my mind I wanted to go far away from home for college,” she said with a laugh, adding that UT was the only state school to which she applied. She had also looked at Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech and Alabama-Huntsville, all schools with good engineering programs.
However, she had actually already felt a little at home at UT because her mechanical engineering parents, William and Angela, had come to Knoxville for school from Nashville and Newport News, Va., respectively.
She also attended the Governors School for Sciences and Engineering at UT in the summer while in high school, and she picked industrial engineering.
“I was not sure what it was, but I had a lot of fun,” she said.
That made her interested in one day studying industrial engineering in college, saying it is less technical than typical engineering subjects and it also allows her to use her creative side. She also likes that it bridges the fields of engineering and business.
While she was developing a planned course of study, she was less certain where she wanted to do that academic work. She was not even that familiar with the Haslam Scholars program, she admitted, but decided to go ahead and apply and submit some initial essays related to the Torchbearer creed and being a Haslam Scholar.
“I wasn’t expecting it,” she said. “I just thought I might be in the Chancellor’s Honors Program, so I was surprised when they said I was a semifinalist.”
She ended up becoming a finalist, too, and spent some time on campus in early March before the pandemic shut down schools everywhere.
And now that she has found out she has been selected, she is excited and of course hopes classes return to somewhat normal this fall, although she is being cautious about her expectations.
Although an accomplished flute player who was also one of the drum majors at Ooltewah her junior year before focusing on participating in a flute choir connected with UTC her senior year, she does not as of now plan to play with the UT Pride of the Southland Marching Band.
“I am considering an ensemble or another flute choir,” she said, adding that she first played in a band at Ooltewah Middle School in the sixth grade.
She was also a member of the All-State East Honor Band at Ooltewah High.
For a period during her life, Ms. Washington thought she might be carrying a brace along with a flute. She was diagnosed in the fifth grade with scoliosis, a condition in which a person’s spine is curved.
“Due to early detection, I didn’t have to end up with a brace,” she said.
The personal experience, though, has made her a teenage advocate for bringing attention to the disease and the importance of early detection, particularly in minority and low-income communities, where those diagnosed later than desired might face painful and expensive treatment and surgery.
Among her other activities, Ms. Washington was president of her high school’s Science Olympiad team, was co-president of the Model United Nations club, and secretary of Ooltewah’s National Honor Society chapter.
She is also an International Baccalaureate graduate candidate and has been a Girl Scout since kindergarten. In the latter, Ms. Washington earned the Gold Award, the Girl Scouts’ equivalent of being named an Eagle Scout, for her work advocating for scoliosis awareness in underrepresented community groups.
And now she has been given an award by the Big Orange in the form of a Haslam Scholarship, too.
jcshearer@comcast.net