Issaquah Alps Trails Club seeks student essays for scholarship prize

Published 10:10 am Monday, April 8, 2013

The Issaquah Alps Trails Club is seeking entries from high school students at Issaquah, Liberty, Skying and Hazen high schools in its annual Bill Longwell Memorial Scholarship program.

Longwell was a longtime Trails Club member who taught English at Hazen High School for many years. With the help of his students, he was responsible for building and maintaining many of the trails on Tiger and Squak mountains.

Each year since his death in 2007, the Trails Club has offered a $1,000 scholarship to the best student essay. Often runners-up qualify for smaller awards. The choices of topic for this year’s scholarship are:

1) What do you like about the Issaquah Alps and their trails systems? How did these trails systems come about? What do you foresee for their future?

2) Interest in the environment and long term sustainability of our planet has never been greater. What should the Issaquah Alps Trails Club do to help our youth be better informed about issues and become more active locally? In other words support the often repeated phrase: “Think globally and act locally.”

Essays of 700-1,000 words are to be submitted to the Trails Club by May 1. Interested seniors should contact their school counselors for more information about applying.