Bethel Stu­dent Re­ceives “Re­al­iz­ing the Dream” Schol­ar­ship

MISHAWAKA—Every year, 30 stu­dents at­tend­ing pri­vate col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties in In­di­ana re­ceive the “Re­al­iz­ing the Dream” schol­ar­ship. The re­cip­i­ents are all first-gen­er­a­tion col­lege stu­dents se­lected by the In­de­pen­dent Col­leges of In­di­ana (ICI), and funds are pro­vided by a grant from Lilly En­dow­ment Inc.  

This year, one of the re­cip­i­ents is Sama­rah Williams, a Bethel sopho­more ma­jor­ing in el­e­men­tary ed­u­ca­tion. She re­ceived an email last se­mes­ter ask­ing about whether her par­ents had gone to col­lege. When she re­sponded that they had not, she was in­vited to a meet­ing where her ma­jor, grades and fam­ily back­ground were dis­cussed. About two weeks later, she re­ceived an­other email let­ting her know she was se­lected to re­ceive the schol­ar­ship. 

“It makes me feel very proud of my­self and ex­cited,” Williams said. “I know it’s kind of hard to not have par­ents who went to col­lege, be­cause it’s kind of like I’m on this jour­ney by my­self, so it’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, and I felt like my hard work was pay­ing off.” 

Williams said that while the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing a first-gen­er­a­tion col­lege stu­dent is an ex­cit­ing one, it can also be a bit over­whelm­ing at times, but she is grate­ful for the in­di­vid­u­als who have come along­side to help. 

“It’s ex­cit­ing to be the first one, but it’s also been kind of dif­fi­cult, be­cause my mom does­n’t know any­thing about fi­nan­cial forms or FAFSA...so I’ve been do­ing that on my own with a lit­tle bit of help from my coun­selors from high school,” Williams said. 

In ad­di­tion to the $3,000 schol­ar­ship each stu­dent re­ceives, the re­cip­i­ents can choose an in­flu­en­tial ed­u­ca­tor who made a dif­fer­ence in their lives to re­ceive a $1,000 pro­fes­sional de­vel­op­ment grant. For Williams, that ed­u­ca­tor was one of her third-grade teach­ers, Camel­lia Daba­gia. 

“A month or two into the school year, I trans­ferred into [Daba­gia’s] class­room, and she was still su­per sweet,” Williams said. “She was very in­spir­ing for me, and I was ac­tu­ally able to go ob­serve her class­room last se­mes­ter . . . and I can just see her love for stu­dents.” 

Daba­gia teaches at Knapp El­e­men­tary School in Michi­gan City, Ind., where she has taught for 14 years. She has many pleas­ant mem­o­ries of the time Williams spent in her class­room. 

“Sama­rah joined my third-grade class­room at Knapp a cou­ple of months af­ter the school year started,” Daba­gia said. “She was such a friendly stu­dent to all of her class­mates . . . I re­mem­ber her sit­ting in the front row on my car­pet, and her hav­ing the sweet­est smile on her face while I would read sto­ries.” 

Many of the sto­ries Daba­gia se­lected to share with her stu­dents tied in with her class­room theme, “the fu­ture be­longs to those who be­lieve in the power of their dreams.” 

“As a teacher, I never know what life lessons stu­dents are go­ing to carry with them through­out their ed­u­ca­tion,” Daba­gia said. “It is my hope that they at least carry some of the life skills nec­es­sary for achieve­ment to help them over­come chal­lenges they may face, so I am par­tic­u­larly de­lighted that Sama­rah took to heart that les­son of fol­low­ing her dreams to achieve suc­cess.” 

One at­tribute Daba­gia noted in Williams was her stead­fast per­se­ver­ance through var­i­ous dif­fi­cul­ties. 

“What re­ally stood out to me the most about Sama­rah is that no mat­ter what ob­sta­cles or cir­cum­stances she faced as a small child, she per­se­vered through all of her ob­sta­cles,” Daba­gia said. “I’m glad I was able to be . . . an adult in her life that was able to en­cour­age her to never give up.” 

Daba­gia is cur­rently look­ing into the ways that she will use the grant to pro­vide en­rich­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and ma­te­ri­als for her stu­dents. 

“As a teacher, this is the great­est re­ward and honor that any ed­u­ca­tor can re­ceive,” Daba­gia said. “I want stu­dents to suc­ceed, not just in the class­room, but through­out the course of their lives, so it’s such an honor.” 

Williams hopes to some­day be­come a teacher her­self. She would love to teach sci­ence and read­ing in el­e­men­tary ed­u­ca­tion, but her long-term goal is to op­er­ate a preschool. 

“My dream is to be a teacher,” Williams said. “I would like to open my own preschool af­ter a cou­ple of years of teach­ing.” 

Nor­mally, a cer­e­mony would be held to honor the schol­ar­ship re­cip­i­ents and their cho­sen in­flu­en­tial ed­u­ca­tors; how­ever, that event has been can­celed this year due to COVID-19. In­stead, the schol­ar­ship re­cip­i­ents all cre­ated brief videos shar­ing about their ex­pe­ri­ences and what the schol­ar­ships mean to them. These videos can be viewed at ici­in­di­ana.org/​rtd. Williams’ video can be viewed in­di­vid­u­ally on YouTube un­der the ti­tle, “Re­al­iz­ing the Dream: Sama­rah Wil­iams.”