It was getting late in the spring and high-school senior Nicole Solawetz of Des Moines, Iowa, still didn’t know where she was going to college. Washington University was her first choice, but she was still waiting on the admission decision.
That’s when she was invited to campus to interview as one of 35 finalists from an international pool of about 2,000 applicants for the University’s Danforth Scholars Program, an honor bestowed upon a select group of incoming students who exhibit exceptional “scholarship, leadership, service and the potential to make a difference in the community, both now and in the future.”
One of four students named in 2002 to receive a four-year, full-tuition scholarship through the program, Solawetz has more than lived up to the selection criteria.
“No one could surpass Nicole Solawetz as an ambassador of hope or represent better what we want all our young leaders to be: sensitive to culture, respectful and appreciative of diversity, well-educated and appreciative of the process of learning, thoughtful, fair, kind and just,” says Sharon Stahl, Ph.D., associate dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and director of the Danforth Scholars Program.
As a William and Elizabeth Gray Danforth Fellow, Solawetz has touched young lives as a volunteer in orphanages in Chile and Mexico and as a tutor in low-income Hispanic neighborhoods of south St. Louis.
She’s taught English-as-a-second-language classes to immigrants in the St. Louis area and volunteered at the St. Louis County Juvenile Detention Center. She helped organize a campus-wide day of service, set up volunteer work sites and procured food donations — all the while making the Dean’s List four years running.
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“My mother instilled the volunteer bug in me at a very early age,” Solawetz says. “Our family helped sponsor a very large family of refugees who came to Des Moines from Sudan. They had six kids, and I spent a lot of time getting to know them, helping them learn English.”
The oldest of four siblings, Solawetz has a sister, Kristyna, who began studies here last year. Her mother, Wendy, holds a master’s degree in child development and works with Catholic Charities. Her father, Bill, is a geneticist for Pioneer Hi-Bred International.
Solawetz first became interested in languages when her grade school launched a Spanish program. “It wasn’t much of a Spanish class, but it was enough to get me hooked,” she says.
She took four years of high-school Spanish, practicing her skills over three summers as an intern with Back2Back Ministries in Monterrey, Mexico. There, she helped with translation and coordinated service work of U.S. student groups in five orphanages.
Solawetz continued Spanish studies here and spent seven months in the University’s study-abroad program in Chile, living in the home of a large working-class family and taking classes at Pontificia Universidad Católica in Santiago.
In St. Louis, she’s been heavily involved with community-service programs sponsored by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures in Arts & Sciences. Coordinated by Virginia Braxs, lecturer in Spanish, these volunteer programs allow students to practice language skills while making valuable contributions to the Hispanic community.
Solawetz has become a fixture in a mentoring program for underprivileged children at Acción Social Comunitaria, a nonprofit organization providing health care and support services for low-income families on the city’s south side. She’s one of about 15 language students who spend Tuesday or Thursday evenings helping Hispanic children with homework, math and English.
“Out of everything I’ve done at the University, this has been my biggest inspiration,” Solawetz says. “It’s made me realize just how much I enjoy working with kids. It’s also been a great opportunity to get away from my studies for a while and do what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
Solawetz will graduate today with an Arts & Sciences double major in psychology and Spanish and a minor in business administration. She hopes someday to pursue graduate studies here at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work.
For now, she’s headed back to Santiago to work with orphans in a community program organized by a student at Harvard University.
And in 2007, she’ll be in Chile once again as recipient of a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship. In addition to course work, she plans to pursue research and stay involved, as always, in community-service projects.