As you know, we made our goal - and exceeded it - last week. On Friday, we announced the winners of our three awards at the Academic Conference. Thanks to your generosity, each of these winners will be awarded a scholarship for their freshman year!

Best Research

Education Discrimination

Areanna Castillo, Alicia Flores, & Mercedez Parra

Best Innovation

Notoriety, Naiveté, & Nefariousness

Jeffery Greene, Valerie Rodriguez, & James Kelly

Best Creativity

Eye of the Beholder

Madison Mollico, Michelle Loustaunau, & Alexa Garcia

Congratulations to all of our winners and all of our gratitude to you for making these scholarships possible!

With thanks,

Tom Murray, Program Director

Thanks to all of your generosity, we made it to - and beyond - our goal of $4,500! We raised just over $5,000 from all of our wonderful donors which will be added to a matching gift of $5,000 from the Dorrance Scholarships Program. Thanks to you, we will be able to reward the students with the best presentations at the Academic Conference.

Hopefully, you were able to watch some of the sessions on our Facebook Live stream, but if you missed it you can still see them on our Facebook page.

Winners will be announced on Friday at our awards ceremony and we will post one additional update then so you can see the impact of your gift - check back soon!

With gratitude,

Tom Murray

Greetings Donors!

As I previewed in earlier messages, we will be streaming some of our students' presentations at the Academic Conference, which starts...today! Over the next two days, over 330 students will present the research they have conducted in the past four and a half weeks. And in that time we have made it to 84% of our fundraising goal - with 8 days left! Please be sure to share our fundraising page to help us get to our goal, which will be matched by the Dorrance Scholarships Program.

Sessions will be streamed on our Facebook page between 10:15am and 1:00pm today, July 11 and then from 10:15am to noon tomorrow, July 12. Below is the list of students who will be featured along with their presentation titles.

Thank you again for all of your support in making this campaign successful!

Tom Murray, Program Director

• Sienna Martinez, Naillil Jacinto, and Antonia Snyder "Colors and Cultures: Hues of the World, Castilian Colors, The Blinding Five, and Symbolic Colors in India"
• Miguel Romo, Treyton Francisco, and Amar Keshav Tuli "Cultural Identities"
• Kimberly Varela, Daniela Rodriguez, and Amy Pacheco "Nuestras Raíces"
• Gilberto Gonzalez, Carlos Romo, and Deanna Mireles "Golden Ratio: A Symbol of Perfection"
• Serena Cruz and Brandon Sosa "In Unity We Triumph"

Just four days into our campaign, and we are more than halfway there! Thank you so much for your support of the New Start Academic Conference. Our students are busy at work, and were required to submit their titles and topics to us by Sunday. There are so many interesting topics, such as “Symbols, Opportunities, and Education in the Navajo Culture,” “Misconceptions of Mental Illness,” and “Bridges Before Barriers.” This week, our students will have to submit their full proposal, describing their group's overarching topic and submitting individual abstracts for each members’ research.

On behalf of all of our students, thank you for supporting their first steps into the academic community of the University of Arizona! And please help us spread the word so we can be sure to get the full benefit of our matching gift. You can use the social media buttons on our crowdfunding page.