{"667471":{"#nid":"667471","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Clark Scholarship Helps Alex Castrejon Realize His Georgia Tech Dream","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EBy the time Alex Castrejon graduated from high school, he had visited Georgia Tech\u2019s campus nine times. Since sixth grade, he knew that he wanted to be an engineer, and Georgia Tech was his dream school.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EGrowing up in metro Atlanta, he worked on construction sites and cleaned dishes part-time. His parents, both immigrants from Southern Mexico, pushed him to go to college so he wouldn\u2019t have to keep working manual labor jobs. But the path to actually enrolling at Tech was anything but easy.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ECastrejon\u2019s high school was a low-income school that received federal funding to support underprivileged students, and he spent a lot of time worrying that he wasn\u2019t \u201cgood enough\u201d for Tech. Those worries ended up being unfounded. Yet Castrejon found himself facing another obstacle: health challenges in his family strained finances and left him wondering whether he could afford the Georgia Tech education he had dreamed about.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nImage\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nAlex Castrejon headshot\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cCollege was still in my future, but it looked like it would take a different shape than I\u2019d imagined,\u201d Castrejon said. \u201cI prepared myself to be a commuter student, and to keep my job in construction, balancing that with classes. It felt unfair \u2013 I was finally good enough, but I didn\u2019t have the means to fully immerse myself in school.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThen, Castrejon received a letter that he had been accepted to the College of Engineering\u2019s Clark Scholars Program.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/coe.gatech.edu\/news\/2023\/04\/clark-scholarship-helps-alex-castrejon-realize-his-georgia-tech-dream\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ERead Alex\u0027s story on the College of Engineering website.\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe ME student fell in love with engineering and Tech in middle school.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"The ME student fell in love with engineering and Tech in middle school."}],"uid":"27446","created_gmt":"2023-04-21 17:27:50","changed_gmt":"2023-04-21 17:42:11","author":"Joshua Stewart","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2023-04-18T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2023-04-18T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"670603":{"id":"670603","type":"image","title":"Alex Castrejon","body":null,"created":"1681839636","gmt_created":"2023-04-18 17:40:36","changed":"1682098879","gmt_changed":"2023-04-21 17:41:19","alt":"Alex Castrejon headshot","file":{"fid":"253493","name":"Alex-Castrejon-newsThumb.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2023\/04\/21\/Alex-Castrejon-newsThumb.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2023\/04\/21\/Alex-Castrejon-newsThumb.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":539338,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2023\/04\/21\/Alex-Castrejon-newsThumb.jpg?itok=MUianfEC"}}},"media_ids":["670603"],"groups":[{"id":"604685","name":"Clark Scholars"},{"id":"1237","name":"College of Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"145","name":"Engineering"}],"keywords":[{"id":"186163","name":"Georgia Tech Clark Scholars Program"},{"id":"177342","name":"A. James \u0026 Alice B. Clark Foundation"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jstewart@gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJoshua Stewart\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nCollege of Engineering\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jstewart@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}