The Deseret News-KSL Television Sterling Scholar Awards program has grown dramatically over the years since those humble beginnings in 1962.
Not only are most of Utah's public high schools involved, but the program was even adopted and then adapted by public high schools in Hawaii. Inquiries from other areas are regularly fielded as well according to Deseret News Sterling Scholar director Stephen Handy.That first year, however, only the school districts in Salt Lake County-- Salt Lake, Granite, Jordan and Murray - participated, but it didn't take long for others to express interest. Pretty soon, the program gained near-statewide acceptance.
It should be noted that because of the program's growth, only the 51 public high schools along the Wasatch Front are directly managed by the Deseret News and KSL Television. Four regional Sterling Scholar programs formed from consortiums of school districts and high schools in northeast, central, southwest and southeast Utah follow the Deseret News/KSL Television Sterling Scholar Awards format making some adaptations and following their own timetables. The 612 Sterling Scholar nominees featured in this section are from high schools in seven counties: Cache, Box Elder, Weber, Davis, Salt Lake, Tooele and Utah.
The Sterling Scholar selection process for school nominees began last fall and perhaps even last year in some schools. By Jan. 23, a report of nominees, including a photograph of each student, was provided to the Deseret News.
The next deadline was Feb. 9, when 612 portfolios were due at the newspaper.
A recent innovation is the standardization of portfolio covers used by each Sterling Scholar in order for the emphasis to be on content rather than the design of the portfolio cover.
"We've just had lots of concerns over the years with too much emphasis being placed on what the portfolio looked like on the outside," said Angela Glissmeyer, assistant director of the Sterling Scholar program. "We want judges, coordinators and nominees to be more concerned with what's on the inside, so we borrowed back an idea from the Hawaii program to provide a standardized cover. Most of the feedback has been positive, although there have been some minor challenges with the binding process," she said.
Another reason for going to the uniform portfolio cover is the growth of the program and the challenges associated with sorting and handling 612 booklets.
The preparation of the portfolio following rigid guidelines is one of the signature aspects of the Sterling Scholar program. Given the fact that only 24 pages are allowed and seven of them are required pages, it is challenging for most of these students to boil down their many accomplishments and categorize them into scholarship, leadership and community service. However, with able faculty advisers and the fact that portfolios have been prepared every year since 1962, the projects somehow come together - and remarkably well.
When semifinal judging begins the morning of Feb. 25, some 78 judges will start their day by reviewing each portfolio in their category.
"We can't thank school superintendents, principals and faculty enough for the donation of their time to Sterling Scholar judging," said Glissmeyer, who has the job of finding the judges. "We just couldn't do it without them, and I know they have lots of fun seeing what other outstanding students besides their own have accomplished."
A careful procedure is followed to ensure complete fairness; a judge from, say, Weber High School, is sent to judge students from schools outside his or her own school district. Likewise, judges from Spanish Fork High School might come to Salt Lake County. The procedure gives each semifinalist an equal chance to exhibit his or her abilities and scholarship and advance to the final round.
The responsibility of judges in each category in the semifinal round is to select five finalists, not in any order, who will advance to the final round.
Since the Wasatch Front program is broken up further into south, central and north regions, this means that each category will have 15 finalists. For all 12 categories, 180 finalists will advance from among 600 nominees.
The judging process is difficult, Handy said, because evaluators are looking at the cream of the cream. There are some subjective differences that will stand out, however. "As coordinators, we're sometimes pacing the floor way past 6 p.m. as judges haggle over the final one or two selections," he said. Sometimes it can get intense.
The finalists are announced in the Feb. 26 edition of the Deseret News. And again this year, the information will also be released via the Deseret News Web Edition (see accompanying story). On March 11, the day of final judging, the 180 finalists go through essentially the same procedure as they did for the semifinal round. This day's judging will be held at East High School with completely new judges. "For the final round we need 36 judges, and we bring them in from higher education and sometimes from the business community," Glissmeyer said.
Winners are not announced until the awards ceremony at Cottonwood High School on April 1. Everyone is invited, and with an auditorium capacity of 3,000, no one should stay home.
The awards program is under the supervision of KSL Television's Dave Manookin, vice president of programming, and show director Linda Davies. "We really try and do our best with a professionally staged program," Manookin said. The program hasn't actually been broadcast for the past several years because sponsors, the Deseret News and KSL Television felt that more should be going to the winners in the way of cash awards, which total nearly $20,000.
The expense of broadcasting the show has been put into cash awards instead.
"These are all outstanding young people," Handy said, "and most of them already have scholarships, and even though the Sterling Scholars is primarily a recognition program, we hope that in some small way the cash awards will help them further their education. We've heard some pretty touching stories about the cash awards."
At the awards program the tension builds somewhat in the fashion of the Academy Awards until the winners are announced. The finalists from each category are called up to the stage, and little by little identities are revealed until it is clear who the winners are.
Sterling Scholars will each receive a $1,000 check, and the runners up will get $250. The General Scholarship Sterling Scholar will receive an additional $1,500.
The Deseret News/KSL Television Sterling Scholar Awards program can be mind-numbing at times, Handy said, but it's also very rewarding for its sponsors. "We live with it all year," he said. "We get phone calls every week from coordinators, parents, students and principals with concerns and questions. It's something in my department we talk about nearly every day, but we enjoy it and feel that as a media company we have a responsibility to better the communities we serve by putting something back. It's always gratifying to read an article in our newspaper about some person's accomplishments, especially when they list as a part of their resume that they were a Sterling Scholar."