Former NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless will present University of Colorado senior Jeni Sorli with a $10,000 scholarship from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation during a free public campus event next week.
The award ceremony Thursday will coincide with a presentation by McCandless, who will share his space shuttle experiences as a NASA astronaut. The lecture will be at noon in the lobby of Andrews Hall Residential College, part of the Kittredge Community complex on the southeast edge of the CU campus.
Sorli, a chemical engineering major from Billings, Mont., has also received other prestigious awards. She is a Goldwater Scholar, an Engineering Merit Scholar, a Norlin Scholar, a Presidential Scholar and a ConocoPhillips engineering intern.
The Astronaut Scholarship is the largest cash award given in the United States to science and engineering undergraduate students based solely on merit. There were 32 awards dispersed this year through the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation to outstanding college students majoring in science, technology, engineering or math. Over $3 million has been awarded in scholarships by the ASF to date.
McCandless, a retired Navy captain, flew on NASA’s STS-41B Challenger mission in 1984, which was commanded by CU alumnus Vance Brand, one of 20 astronauts with ties to the university.
