Writing on the Wall For JT West Shorewood Students

There is a pennant from the University of St. Louis on a Joliet West High School wall with $16,000 of photocopied cash around it to mark the amount of scholarship money offered to Samantha Marconi.

A banner from Loyola University is surrounded by $14,000 in symbolic scholarship cash in honor of the deal Erin Cox was awarded.

Those students from are just two of many in Joliet West to be honored on walls in the school's hallways for getting accepted to colleges and earning scholarship money.

School secretary Chris Ebenroth constructed the Student Stars and scholarship displays. Ebenroth credited Jo Wooten of Pupil Personnel Services for coming up with the idea.

One wall features photographs of the students inside stars, along with stickers of the colleges that sent them acceptance letters. The other is of the school banners and the amount of scholarship money earned by Joliet West students.

As of March 1, that amount totaled $576,091. And Wooten predicted the number would climb into the millions before the school year was through.

Joliet West Principal Teresa Gibson told of the two displays raising awareness of college application deadlines and encouraging students to think about their futures.

Cox, who plans on majoring in environmental science, and Marconi, who intends to major in physical therapy, appear to have their futures well in hand.

And as far as the future of the scholarship and college displays, Gibson has ideas for making them even bigger, and to start including faculty stars as well.