Four Scholarship Winners Named
This coming year, four young people who have received Higdon Family Association scholarship awards will be pursuing degrees at institutions in Kentucky, Florida, and California. They all made good grades and hope one day to have careers in engineering and business. They are Elayne and Thomas Grant Bischoff from Bardstown, Kentucky; Neocles Higdon from Carmichael, California; and Morgan Nicole Leonard from Newburg, Maryland.
Elayne Bischoff
Elayne, of Bardstown, Kentucky, received a scholarship from the Higdon Family Association in 2016 and has been attending the University of Dayton School of Business Administration, where she maintains a high grade-point average and works for Human Resources. She expects to graduate in May 2020 with a B.S. in Business Administration, concentrating on Finance and Supply Chain. In her hometown, she was Valedictorian of her high school class. She was a financial development program intern for G. E. Appliances, a student painters branch manager for Young Entrepreneurs Across America, and chief accounting associate for Sutherland Business Systems.
Recently she traveled to San Cristobel Island, Ecuador, on a Galapagos Islands Mission Trip for her church, where she had “powerful conversations” with the Islanders that helped her improve her Spanish language skills while she explored “the breathtaking beauty of the island’s nature and animals.”
Elayne is also a volleyball and tennis enthusiast and has been playing the piano since she was eight years old. Elayne’s Higdon Family Association Sponsor is her mother, Tonja Higdon Bischoff, who is the daughter of Joseph David and Joyce Higdon and the granddaughter of Raymond and Emma Higdon.
Thomas Grant Bischoff
Elayne’s brother, Thomas, also received a Higdon scholarship award this year. He is a senior at Bardstown High School and plans to attend the University of Kentucky in Lexington to major in business administration and eventually earn the MBA. He enjoys playing soccer and tennis and working on cars. Like his sister, he has worked for Sutherland Business Systems (accounting). He has also worked on the family farm and in the family farm equipment business, Bischoff Enterprises. He really enjoys spending time with his sociable family, he writes. It includes his parents, grandparents, his three sisters and “15 great aunts and uncles.”
Neocles “Nikko” Higdon
Nikko received a Higdon Family Association scholarship award in 2015 to attend California State University, Sacramento. He enrolled there and is now a senior, expecting to graduate in December of this year with a degree in finance. He has done well and was on the Dean’s Honor List for the Fall 2016 semester. He continues to be a member of his Greek Folk Dance group. He joined Kappa Sigma fraternity at California State. He believes that being in a fraternity has helped him manage his studies, family, work, and personal time. His goal after graduation is to work for a professional sports team one day. Neocles is the son of HFA members Christopher Larry and Maria Higdon, of Carmichael, California.
Morgan Nicole Leonard
Morgan Nicole Leonard plans to attend the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, FL She wants to earn her B. S. in Engineering, specifically, Ocean Engineering. She was sponsored for the HFA scholarship by HFA member Gerald (Jerry) Higdon, of Port Tobacco, Md. Her mother, Kimberly Nicole Higdon Leonard, is the daughter of Gerald Norris Higdon. Morgan’s great grandfather is Thomas Leonard Higdon, Sr., son of Dr. Thomas Lawson Higdon.
Morgan is very interested in studying the Ocean. She explains, “less than 5% of the Ocean has been discovered. Amazing and hard to believe what is still to be explored and discovered in the Ocean. It is both my interest and love for the Ocean that had me searching for a career path that would allow me to study and be a part of preserving the future of this magnificent body of water.” She and her family have been “snorkeling through caves, snorkeling over coral reefs, cliff jumping, zip lining, deep sea fishing, and so much more.” She was attracted to the excellent ocean engineering program at Florida Institute of Technology.
Members of the HFA Scholarship Committee are William R. “Bill” Higdon, Chairman; Charles P. Higdon; and Sally Higdon Swain.
Last update for this page:
