Every year during the Spring semester, Whitworth hosts a few Honors scholarship weekends. These weekends are times in which highly motivated students are invited to stay at Whitworth. During the weekend, the invited students give a speech, participate in a discussion group, and write an essay in hopes of winning a full ride scholarship or a runner-up $1,000 a year scholarship. 

This year, one of the full-ride scholarship winners is eighteen year old Stella Ester Palmisano. 

Stella currently attends Trinity Classical Academy in Santa Clarita, California. She said she applied to Whitworth on “a bit of a whim.” 

“It was 1 a.m. in the morning when I saw it on a list on Common App and remembered that many of my family members had attended. Why not apply?” 

Stella said she “adored” her time on campus during the Honors Scholarship weekend. She comes from a pretty small community with just 200 kids in her high school, so at first she was a little intimidated and nervous about interacting with so many new peers. However, her fears were quickly dismissed during the first ice breaker activity. 

“[It] set the tone for the rest of my weekend,” she remembers. “My group was so warm, even if it was charmingly awkward in the beginning. After spending about ten minutes stumbling and laughing through trying to remember each other’s names and pet’s names, we had such a helpful foundation to go into our discussion and activity with graciousness and respect.” 

Whitworth was Stella’s first college visit in the search for her future home, and she said, “the weekend really impacted how I viewed every other college I ended up visiting.” 

Once in college, Stella plans to major in psychology with a minor in philosophy. Eventually, she hopes these education pursuits will transfer well into a career as a midwife. 

In her free time, Stella enjoys walking in the nearby gardens and museums. 

“I am terrified of actually swimming in the ocean, spurring many jokes from my less shark-fearing Cali friends,” she said. “But I do love to read some poetry from the safety of my big blanket on the shore.”

When Stella received the news that she was a winner of the full-ride scholarship, she said her whole family “started crying, of course.” 

“I was so grateful for the opportunity I was given through the weekend. I made sure to thank the handful of my most beloved high school teachers, joking that they deserve the credit for having shaped me into a stronger collaborator, writer, and conversationalist.”