Turning His Scholastic Life Around—

Keith Russell Named Presidential Scholar Candidate

By Jeff White

Keith Russell knows that his move to Texas for a semester last year was the best thing for him.

Keith, a 17-year-old senior at Newtown High School, spent most of his freshman and sophomore years with a close-knit group of friends that were all well-stocked intellectually but found it hard to apply themselves scholastically. One after another, Keith watched his friends drop out of school. Simply put, Keith’s mother, Cynthia, was terrified that her son would suffer the same fate. Indeed, Keith gives her good indication that her fears were valid.

“I see a lot of smart kids who have dropped out of high school. I would have done that too if my mom didn’t send me to Texas,” he recalled in the high school’s media center this week.

But he did get out; Keith got a fresh start in Texas—staying with an aunt and uncle in Plano, just outside Dallas, and attending Plano Senior High School—and by all accounts he turned his academic life around.

“When I went out there, all I had was myself and the life that I had build for myself [in Newtown], which wasn’t much,” Keith explained. “Something just clicked. I had access to the same things I had access to before, but they were not an issue. I had to prove myself all over again.

“It was I work or I don’t survive,” he added. “I worked, or I dishonored my family and myself.”

Keith Russell returned to NHS this fall with what his mother called a renewed sense of purpose. And he has been recognized for it.

Keith was recently named one of more than 2,600 candidates in the year 2000 Presidential Scholars Program. The candidates were selected from nearly 2.8 million students expected to graduate from US high schools this spring.

The candidates were selected on the basis of their performance on either the SAT or ACT standardized assessment. Keith tallied a score of 1580 in the combined verbal and math exam, a perfect score in the SAT II math 2C and a 780 in the SAT reading assessment.

“This came as a surprise to me,” Mrs Russell mused, not so much remarking about her son’s high scores but the fact that he could be nationally recognized for them.

The United States Presidential Scholars Program was established in 1964 to recognize some of the nation’s most distinguished graduating high school seniors. Students have the opportunity to become Presidential Scholars based on two paths of accomplishment: academic achievement and achievement in the arts. Approximately 20 females and 20 males are selected from each state as candidates.

For now, Keith is playing the waiting game. Having learned of his eligibility, Keith will now fill out the forms required for further consideration, and await the White House Commission of Presidential Scholars’ decision concerning the final winners. Only one male and female will be chosen from each state as scholars, and they will be flown down to Washington, DC, for several days in June to receive the Presidential Scholar’s medallion at a recognition ceremony.

But it seems that Keith’s medallion is worn everyday, in the form of a large, green, dirty book bag stuffed to overflowing. As he shoulders in each time with a strained swing over one shoulder, then the other, he is reminded that his life has a new focus, and that his national recognition only just tapped in to something that was there long before.

During his senior year, Keith is stretching himself like most of his other classmates. He was a member of singers and the high school’s tech club in the past, and now he has poured his extracurricular time into jumpstarting the school’s Bible club, of which he is an active member and recruiter. He has also spent time as a missionary in the Dominican Republic, building homes and playing with children.

And of course he is right in the middle of the college hunt, though by his mother’s observations, Keith does not seem that stressed over it. He has already sent in his application to Yale, and is currently working on the University of Connecticut’s application. Ask him what he intends to study, and you will see his shoulders shrug.

“I don’t know what I want to do with my life,” he said this week.

His mother, for her part, thinks that he would make a good teacher, because of his ability to lead people. But she admits, “there are so many things he wants to study, he can’t decide.”

“The one thing I can say about Keith is that he’s as gifted in character as he is in intelligence,” she added.

Asked whether or not he was nervous returning to NHS last fall after an academic rebirth in Texas, Keith said yes, because he knew the same habits he left behind awaited his return. “It was scary to return to a place where things were easy,” he said of his return to Newtown.

As exemplified in his recent honor, however, Keith Russell has done just fine this year. Perhaps it has boiled down to meeting the challenges that are in front of him, just like he did in Texas. “My natural tendency is to be lazy, but when I was forced to rise to the occasion, I did.”