This Week's Student Spotlight: Brian Dolan

Age: 18

School: Nanuet High School

Achievement: Shown leadership skills as proven in his elected title of President or Vice-President to most of the clubs he is involved with.

At 18 years old, Brian's resume is already two pages long. If you had to describe this student in one word, it would be involved.  However, this doesn't do any justice to the amount of activities, achievements and volunteer work he has done over the past four years. 

On top of all the activities Brian is engaged in he is also an honor student. He is an Executive Board Member for the National Honor Society. Vice President of the Mu Alpha Theta Math Honors Society.  He is also in the Foreign Language Honors Society and the Tri-M Music Honors Society.

He has been active in the class and school senate at Nanuet High School.  He held the position of class Treasurer and Vice President the first two years of high school, respectively. And the last two years he has been a representative.  Junior year he was Vice President of the School Senate and Senior year he was the President. 

"The student senate runs school-wide activities, most importantly spirit week. We also deal with school-related issues. The class senate focuses on issues that deal specifically with the the class while the school senate focuses on the school as a whole," said Brian Dolan.

Brian was also the President of the Academic League, the Science Olympiad, and Students Against Destructive Decisions this year. 

"The Science Olympiad is a club that focuses on preparing for an event where you compete against other teams in a competition that includes many schools in Rockland and Westchester counties. During the year, you study materials to prepare to take a test that will show your knowledge of the specific topic. There are also events where you have to build something with specific specifications that will be judged against all the other schools.

For example, one event called for teams to build a tower that could hold a specific amount of weight. The team with the lightest tower was declared the winner.  The Academic league is a club that is similar to Jeopardy. There are four people on each team and questions are asked that range from math and science to pop culture. You compete against other schools in the county," said Brian.

Brian is also musically inclined. He is involved in jazz band, concert choir and concert band. He was selected as Rockland County Music Educators Association All-County Chorus, Bass. He also won NYSSMA Gold & Silver medals for Trumpet and Singing.

"I've been playing the trumpet since fifth grade. The music department has enabled me to do trumpet as well as participate in the chorus. I was recently awarded the National School Chorus Award."

Brian has also participated in track, he is on the yearbook committee, homecoming committee, prom committee, and the Nanuet High School wellness committee.

Brian has been a Boy Scout since 1998. One of his major accomplishments is becoming an Eagle Scout. 

"For my eagle project, I restored an area at Saint Aedan's Church in Pearl River that has a memorial to a former pastor who had passed away in the 70's. This pastor, who was a World War II veteran, died suddenly and the church made a small memorial to him that had two benches on it with a flag pole behind. This area—due to neglect—turned bad very fast and soon it became very badly overgrown and very dirty. To fix it, I took out all the old plants and replaced them with new ones. I also replaced the old wooded benches with more sturdy blue stone ones. To fundraise, I talked to a lot of companies and requested donations from them and I also collected and cashed cans and glass bottles in grocery stores," said Brian.

He has also contributed his time and skills to about nine other Boy Scouts by working with them on their Eagle Scout projects. 

Last summer he was selected and attended The American Legion Boys State Conference.

"It was located at Morrisville State College upstate. It takes place every year and it gets all of the top boys from each high school in New York together for a conference in leadership, citizenship, and politics and is run by the American Legion members. There were approximately 1000 boys there and we were all broken up into counties. In each county there were three cities that had about 30 boys each in them. Each county had a marine assigned to them so that it could be run efficiently. They set up a mock government and you had to vote to pass legislation and do everything a normal government would do," said Dolan.

Brian plans on attending the University of Scranton in the fall and will study Nursing. 

There is no doubt that his health care education combined with his leadership skills will have a positive effect on the future of our country.

Congratulations Brian on all you have achieved.  It is time to pass the baton, but by no means will your leadership contributions be forgotten at Nanuet High School. Good luck!