Student Celeste Portillo will attend CMC on Alpine Bank Latino/Hispanic Scholarship
Celeste Portillo doesn’t yet quite know what direction she wants to go academically when she attends Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat Springs this coming fall. But she is determined about one thing.
“I might not know exactly how to answer the question, ‘What do you want to study?’” she said. “But I can answer the question, ‘Do you want to study?’” she said. “Yes!”
The Steamboat Springs High School graduating senior is one of 11 recipients of the 2014 Alpine Bank Latino/Hispanic Scholarships, and the only student from Steamboat Springs. Alpine Bank has been awarding scholarships to qualified students since the program began in 1996 and, to date, has financed more than 170 scholarships.
To be considered for these specialized scholastic awards, students must be of Latino/Hispanic descent, classify as an in-district student, have at least a 2.5 GPA and demonstrate financial need, among other criteria. Each scholarship – which equals $2,200 a year – helps to cover the cost of tuition, fees and books for two years.
Without the scholarship, attending college would have been extremely difficult for Portillo to finance. She was just 2 years old when she and her family moved to Colorado from Mexico. Her father Manuel accepted a job working in a restaurant in Estes Park in 1998 and brought her and her mother with him. Portillo has a younger brother and sister as well.
“This is home,” she said, of the United States.
Now her father shovels snow and does landscaping, and both her parents have restaurant jobs.
“My mother and father are very hard working,” Portillo said. “They had to quit school so they could help their own families financially. But they are working minimum paid jobs because they did not get an education.”
Portillo says that’s one of the reasons she understands the importance of learning, though she didn’t always.
“My freshman year I was not aware of the consequences of not working hard in school,” she said. “My first two years I didn’t have a very good GPA. But my junior year, I was growing up and maturing. Everyone else was applying to colleges, and visiting campuses. That’s when I realized it was time to get my grades up.”
Interests include math, photography
Even though Portillo doesn’t precisely know what area of study she’ll settle on, she has several diverse interests.
“I enjoy math, photography, cosmetology and language,” said the bilingual student.
And during this, her final semester, she’s taking SSHS math teacher Clint Koehler’s Advanced Placement Statistics class.
“She is able to make brilliant connections across mathematical standards as she displays her interest and knowledge of mathematics,” Koehler wrote in his letter of recommendation supporting Portillo’s Alpine Bank Scholar application.
“I like math because it’s like a puzzle,” she said. “There’s only one right answer. In other classes, there are no right or wrong answers. I like concrete answers.”
This year’s other scholarship recipients and their respective high schools are Katia Reyes-Castillo, Glenwood Springs High School; Elide Andrade, Roaring Fork High School; Magdalena Hermosillo-Velez, Rifle High School; Alex Jaquez-Caro, Coal Ridge High School; Andy Sandoval, Eagle Valley High School; Thelma Juarez, Battle Mountain High School; Pedro Gallegos, Red Canyon High School; Cinthia Valderrama, Summit High School; Joeli Villa Cedeno, Aspen High School; and Wilber Marquez, Basalt High School.