Every year the New Jersey Beta Chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon at Rutgers University hosts a dinner known as the Balanced Man Scholarship dinner to commemorate winners of the prestigious Balanced Man Scholarship.
The Balanced Man Scholarship takes from the idea of the Balanced Man program which is a program designed to reward students who have shown academic excellence, leadership skills, and a commitment to their health and well-being. This year up to $4000 in awards were given out to select winners.
We would like to give a special thank you to Grand Chapter President Brad Nahrstadt for your presence and inspiring words. Your attendance was deeply appreciated and added great value to the event.
Firstly, the winners of the $250 Balanced Man Scholarship included Brandon Missouri, Dev Joshi, Haider Abdelrahman, Maksims Kurjanovics Kravcenko, Vineet Shah, Zakariya Insanally, and Ziyad Ibrahim while the winner of the $500 scholarship was Ayden O’Keefe, the $750 scholarship winner being Kevin Li and lastly the grand prize winner of $1000 being Freddy Ramos.
Ayden O’Keefe exercised a great deal of balance as he partook in a robotics team at his high school, and he led his team to victory in addition to this he also helped in developing face mask shields for frontline workers with Monmouth makers during the pandemic. Meanwhile, Kevin Li excelled as a Learning Assistant at Rutgers and Assistant Scoutmaster with the Boy Scouts of America. Overall, he showed a great deal with his academic excellence and his mentorship. Finally, Freddy Ramos founded the Rutgers Ecuadorian Alliance as he moved from Ecuador to America. This organization is the main one for people of Ecuadorian descent, and it has grown to over 200 members. Freddy also demonstrated a great deal of comradery as he is currently a student mentor tasked with aiding high school students with their presentation and public speaking abilities.
All these winners embodied many of the characteristics of what a balanced man is. Furthermore, some of the brothers of the fraternity were also awarded based on the ideals of virtue, diligence, and brotherly love with those being Dominic Plesniarski, Paolo Cucchi, and Matthew Joseph with the famed Brother of the Year award going to former President Brandon Hernandez for his great display of brotherly values throughout the year,