Seniors at three Arkansas high schools and one Arkansas resident who attends a Texas high school are among the 160 U.S. Presidential Scholars for 2016 announced this week by U.S. Secretary of Education John King.
Identical twin brothers Bryan K. Conston and Ryan K. Conston, who are students at the Academies of West Memphis; Jordan Lee, a student at Nettleton High in Jonesboro; and Leah C. Crenshaw, who lives in Texarkana, Ark., but attends Texas High School in Texarkana, Texas, are this state’s Presidential Scholars.
The White House Commission on Presidential Scholars, appointed by President Barack Obama, selects the scholars on the basis of their academic success, artistic excellence, essays, school evaluations and transcripts, as well as evidence of community service, leadership and demonstrated commitment to high ideals.
The students will be honored at a June 19 ceremony in Washington, D.C., when each honoree will receive a Presidential Scholar Medallion.
Arkansas typically has two Presidential Scholars in any one year.
“Normally, the program allows for one male and one female from each state,” Simone Olson, executive director of the U.S. Presidential Scholars program, said Thursday.
“You have four because one [Lee] is one of the 20 new Career and Technical Education Scholars … and then one of the twins is one of our 15 atlarge Scholars.
“It doesn’t matter which one,” she added, “because once they are chosen they are just named Scholars.”
As for the selection of twins as Presidential Scholars, Olson said it is unusual but not unprecedented in the history of the program.
Renee Conston, the mother of 18-year-old Bryan and Ryan Conston, said her sons are humble young men who have always excelled academically, earning straight A’s since the beginning of their school careers and into the Advanced Placement courses in high school. The brothers have attended West Memphis schools since kindergarten.
“I remember the long nights — 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m. in the morning — I’d have to make them go to bed,” Renee Conston said. “It was perfection, perfection, perfection.”
She said she and her husband, Cornelius Conston, have five children, two of whom are older than the twins and one who is younger.
“They are the only two who went at it so hard,” she said of the twins.
The brothers are planning to attend Washington University in St. Louis in preparation for careers in medicine. Bryan is interested in orthopedics. Ryan is interested in neurology, his mother said.
The brothers have been offered scholarships that, combined, total more than $3 million, Academies of West Memphis counselor Latarsha Johnson said. The Academies of West Memphis is the recently renamed public high school in the West Memphis School District.
Among his scholarships, Ryan Conston is a recipient of a Gates Millennium Scholarship that will provide funding for his education through the completion of a doctorate, Renee Conston said.
Jordan Lee, son of Rickey and Carla Lee, has been a student in the Nettleton School District since kindergarten. This year he has been president of the student council and involved in Future Business Leaders of America and the Environmental and Spatial Technology program at his school. He is headed to Vanderbilt University, the registrar at his high school said.
Crenshaw, 18, plans to attend Hendrix College in Conway but has not decided on a major, a spokesman for the Texarkana, Texas, Independent School District said Thursday.
Tina Veal-Gooch, executive director of public relations for the district, verified that Crenshaw travels across the state border to attend school. The Texas system accepts students from other districts in Texas and from Arkansas and Louisiana, she said. Out-of-state students do have to pay tuition to attend the Texas schools.
In regard to Crenshaw being selected as Arkansas’ female Presidential Scholar even though she attends school in Texas, Olson said Thursday that a scholar’s permanent home base or residence determines the state the student represents. It doesn’t have anything to do with the location of the school. Students who attend boarding schools, for example, are listed by their states of residence and not the states in which their schools are located.
Presidential Scholars are made up of one male and one female from each state, the district of Columbia and Puerto Rico, plus 15 scholars chosen at large, 20 scholars in the arts and, for the first time, 20 scholars in career and technical education.
The scholars are invited to name a teacher who was influential to them. Bryan Conston nominated Gabriel Gillette, a physics teacher at the Academies of West Memphis. Ryan Conston nominated Dewanda Kirkland, a Spanish language teacher at the Academies of West Memphis.
Jordan Lee nominated Bobbie Timmermann, a business technology teacher at Nettleton High School.