Title:California students expand horizons through Kalmanovitz Scholarship

When Google software engineer Roisin McLoughlin (C’19) was in high school, she visited the Hilltop through a Junior State of America summer program. After three weeks of living in LXR dorm and soaking in campus life, she knew Georgetown was the right fit for her combined academic interests in computer science and government.

McLoughlin, a first-generation college student from California, was selected as a recipient of the Kalmanovitz Scholars Current Use Scholarship Fund, which enables students—primarily from the San Francisco Bay Area—who demonstrate financial need to experience the nation’s capital while pursuing a Georgetown undergraduate education. The fund provides financial aid to four Californians at a time, many of them first-generation college students.

The Kalmanovitz Scholarship and the Georgetown Scholars Program helped McLouglin focus on her passions without having to take on extra part-time jobs.

“The scholarship helped make Georgetown an affordable option for me,” she says. “It allowed me the time to fully focus on studying and academics, and made it possible for me to pursue my double major.” These days, McLoughlin is eyeing a career in tech policy.

In addition, she was able to gain experience in her field through the IT department of The Corp and the VHacks competition in Rome. “The scholarship helped me appreciate all that Georgetown had to offer,” she says.

Sharon Cai (C’22) was attracted to the East Coast for a different reason: if she went to a state school, she would stick with the same people she had always known. “San Francisco is a big bubble. You don’t hear people with different political views,” Cai says. “I wanted to explore the rest of the world, and I thought college would be a great opportunity to do that.”

While living in California, she saw Georgetown’s campus depicted on an episode of the television show Madam Secretary, and fell in love with the city’s monuments. “I wanted to feel like I was one with history,” she says.

Now at Georgetown, Cai enjoys exchanging perspectives with new friends from the middle of the country, the South, and other countries. With reduced student debt, she is considering a history major.

“I have an opportunity to figure out what I want to do instead of worrying about how I am going to pay it off,” says Cai.