HOUSTON – KPRC 2 and American Furniture Warehouse are surprising 20 deserving high school seniors with $2,500 scholarships in 2024. All students selected for scholarships have been nominated by their high schools.
The eighteenth scholarship recipient of the school year is Channelview High School salutatorian Ishanel Martinez Rondon. She is an academic standout, ranked second out of 747 students in her graduating class.
Rondon actively volunteers through Interact Rotary District 5890, serving as President during her senior year. Organizations to which Rondon has donated her time include Harvest4Hungry and the American Cancer Society’s Relay4Life. She has also been involved with environmental education initiatives at her school where she worked on grants to start a rain garden on campus.
With an interest in STEM-related activities, Rondon has competed with her school’s robotics team and exercised social activism with Girls Who Code. She is part of the Peer Assistance and Leadership (PALS) mentorship program at her school. Other activities include varsity tennis and working as a protein engineering researcher at Rice University, where she will go on to study Computer Engineering and Mathematics this fall.
Rondon is originally from the Dominican Republic. She is the co-founder of her school’s chapter of Active Minds, which centers on mental health awareness. Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia recently invited Rondon to Washington, D.C. to give a presentation about a mental health app she created.
You can see the scholarship surprise for Ishanel Martinez Rondon in the video player at the top of this article.