H-ton Senior Ashley Lopez Wins
Math Scholarship
Ashley Lopez knows a thing or two about numbers. The Huntington High School senior is a fine math student, so exceptional that the teenager earned the Jong Pil Lee Memorial Scholarship presented by the Long Island Mathematics Conference Board. The scholarship is valued at $1,500.
Ms. Lopez was honored during a ceremony at SUNY College at Old Westbury. The scholarship is presented annually to a minority student who has excelled in high school math and who plans to continue studying math in college.
“Ashley has been accepted into several colleges and is waiting to hear from several more,” said Marybeth Robinette, Huntington’s district director of mathematics and testing, K-12, who accompanied Ms. Lopez to the scholarship presentation.
Ms. Lopez plans to engage in pre-medicine studies and pursue a minor in mathematics in college. During the scholarship ceremony, the senior cited Lynn Hendricks as the Huntington teacher who inspired her love of math.
Mrs. Hendricks has been Ms. Lopez’s teacher for three different math courses, including Advanced Placement Statistics this year. “Ashley has always stood out from her peers as mature and highly motivated,” the teacher wrote in a letter of recommendation for the scholarship award. “Even as a freshman, she understood the importance of her education and as such continually challenged herself to do better. Her continuous achievements in Integrated Algebra and Algebra 2 Trigonometry are a clear sign of a student whose abilities, work ethic, motivation and self-discipline have prepared her for the more rigorous challenges of college.”
“It is a great honor for Ashley to be chosen from among all the high school seniors on Long Island,” Mrs. Robinette said,” Mrs. Robinette said. “Ashley has accomplished a lot during her four years in Huntington and she speaks very highly of the guidance and encouragement that she has received from Mrs. Hendricks. I was so pleased to be a small part of this day.”
“I didn’t think I was going to be selected knowing only five would be chosen from Long Island,” Ms. Lopez said. “Mrs. Robinette herself told me she can’t recall a time when somebody from Huntington was selected.”
The senior has been enrolled in the district since kindergarten. “As the years progressed, I met wonderful teachers and have grown so close too many,” Ms. Lopez said. “In the high school, I have always looked up to Mrs. Hendricks, Ms. [Anna] Fabela, Mrs. [Kristin] Singer and Mrs. [Marguerite] Montefusco.
Ms. Lopez has taken three years of courses with Mrs. Hendricks, been a student in a science class taught by Ms. Fabela and been her lab assistant for three years and been Ms. Singer’s student in each of the past four years. The teenager is currently participating in a credit-bearing career internship with Mrs. Montefusco.
Ms. Lopez said she has particularly enjoyed math and science courses at the high school. She is president of Huntington’s Spanish Honor Society chapter, treasurer of both the Grandfriends club and the Gay-Straight Alliance and a member of the Key Club, Math Honor Society and the school’s color guard.
The senior is currently enrolled in AP Government and Politics, AP Spanish, AP Literature and Composition, AP Statistics, AP Microeconomics and Honors Physics in addition to the career internship course that involves working with Mrs. Montefusco’s Honors Chemistry class.