Betty O’Brien (left), Scholarship Chairman of the Old Saybrook Garden Club, awards the club’s 2012 prize to UConn freshman, Deanna Willbanks.
Deanna Willbanks, an environmental science major at the University of Connecticut, has been named the winner of the Old Saybrook Garden Club’s 2012 scholarship. Ms. Willbanks, a 2011 graduate of Old Saybrook High School, earned a 3.92 grade-point average in her first semester at UConn while taking chemistry, calculus 2, and oceanography, among other courses–and while paying her own way through college and participating in many extra-curricular activities. “I am strongly interested in chemical waste disposal and toxicology,” says this high-achieving young woman, “…and hope my degree will lead to a job with the DEP [Department of Environmental Quality] or the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency].”
The Old Saybrook Garden Club awards a $1,000 scholarship each year to an Old Saybrook resident who is studying or planning to study botany, city planning, conservation, forestry, horticulture, land management, landscape design, or environmental science at an accredited two- or four-year college of university.