OJR Grad Wins $30K Scholarship in Essay Contest

Paul Prince, chairman of the board of the Greater Pottstown Foundation, presents Owen J. Roberts senior Chandler Kalitsi, with the first installment of a $30,000 scholarship she won in the foundation's annual essay contest.

A recent Owen J. Roberts High School graduate has earned a $30,000 college scholarship from the Greater Pottstown Foundation as a result of her submission in the Shandy Hill Essay Contest.

Named after the founder and first editor of The Pottstown Mercury, He retired in 1967 after 36 years at the helm of The Mercury.

Hill was an ardent believer in supporting education opportunities for students within the Pottstown community.

The Greater Pottstown Foundation strives to continue that worthy objective through various education-related grants and student scholarship awards.

Each year senior students from Pottstown, Pottsgrove, The Hill School and Owen J. Roberts high schools are invited to write an original essay on some aspect of life in the greater Pottstown area.

The Foundation seeks the writer’s original and personal interpretation of how any aspect of life (including, but not limited to art, culture, race, bigotry, employment, poverty, etc.) is effected by living in this area as opposed to somewhere else.

Essay winner Chandler Kalitsi,
plans to study chemistry at Temple University.

In any year that a winning essay is chosen, the writer is granted a $30,000 college scholarship.

This year, the Foundation received a total of 34 essays submitted by students of the four eligible high schools.

The Foundation Board of Directors chose the essay written by Kalitsi, daughter of Annette Harper-Kalitsi.

Kalitsi wrote a heart-rending, if not eye-opening, essay about what it means to be an African-American in a predominantly white school, according to information provided by the Foundation.

The essay, while expressing very personal thoughts, was not critical or cynical as much as it was analytical,
focusing on the evolution of the writer’s personal feelings toward racism, and occasionally the lack thereof, over her 12 years of education.

It concludes with a justification for a more racially tolerant society.

The scholarship award was presented to Kalitsi by Paul Prince, the President of the
Greater Pottstown Foundation Board.

Chandler has been accepted at Temple University where she will be majoring in chemistry. Her current plan is to go on to medical school after receiving her undergraduate degree.