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A. Robert DeHart Scholarship
The $2,000 DeHart Scholarship is presented in honor of De Anza’s founding president.
Genevieve Kolar
As editor of De Anza’s student newspaper and later as student trustee, Genevieve Kolar helped draw attention to important issues that many students confront – including food and housing insecurity.
Those issues are personal
for Genevieve, who’s had
her own brushes with eviction and economic hardship. She plans to graduate with a Liberal Arts degree and transfer this fall to Cal Poly Pomona, where she wants to study urban planning and continue working on behalf of communities in need.
“I had a really rare opportunity to talk about my own struggles,” she said of her year as De Anza’s student representative to the Foothill-De Anza district board of trustees. “Most students don’t have that, and when they’re in those situations, they can end up dropping out of school.”
Genevieve, 21, said she hadn’t planned for the future after graduating from high school in Oregon. But she moved
to San José to live with her father, who insisted she go to college. In her first year at De Anza, she met friends and helpful instructors through the Learning in Communities (LinC) program and support for a learning disability from De Anza’s Disability Support Programs and Services.
At the student newspaper, La Voz, she helped produce articles on topics ranging from sexual abuse to hunger and homelessness. After attending college governance meetings for the paper – and concluding that students need a bigger voice in policy-making – she ran for the position of student trustee. On the board, Genevieve advocated for student housing, raising the minimum wage for student employees, and other issues.
“What really inspired me at De Anza,” she said, “was seeing people from so many different walks of life pursuing their own ideas of success, and their own dreams. It made me feel like I could make my own way.”
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