Historic Columbus awards $2,500 scholarship to UGA-bound Jordan valedictorian

The Historic Columbus Foundation announced Thursday that Jordan Vocational High School’s 2017 valedictorian, Cierra Nell, is the 24^th annual recipient of the Patricia Jackson Howard Memorial Scholarship, named after the HCF executive director who served from 1989-92.

The scholarship’s $2,500 will help Cierra pay for her expenses at the University of Georgia, where she plans to major in psychology and minor in chemistry.

“I was worrying I was a little low on funds for college for my first year,” she said. “So this is going to help a lot. I need as much money as I can get.”

Cierra’s ultimate goal is to become an FBI agent in the Behavioral Analysis Unit. She is intrigued with “the whole idea of getting into someone’s head to understand why they do something in order to prevent anything else from happening.”

Her motivation: “I’ve always lived in poverty, which means I’ve always lived in the lower socioeconomic neighborhoods, with high crime rates. It’s just interesting to think why people do what they do.”

After her mother died two years ago, Cierra moved in with her father. “That was a big change,” she said, “but I still kept coming to Jordan and working extra hard to make sure I could get into a good college.”

Cierra is ranked No. 1 in her class academically, with a 4.135 grade-point average. Her activities include: Health Occupations Students of America; Family, Career and Community Leaders of America; Academic Decathlon; Key Club; Relay for Life and Guys in Ties. Her honors include National Honor Society and National Technical Honor Society.

Part of the scholarship application requires candidates to write an essay about why a property, at least 50 years old, matters to them. Cierra picked Jordan, which opened on 29^th Street in 1906 as Secondary Industrial School, the nation’s first to combine vocational and academic courses in a public school system. It became known as Columbus Industrial High School, then moved to Howard Avenue in 1937, when it was named in honor of G. Gunby Jordan, president of the school board and donor of the school’s original land.

The school was founded, Cierra noted, “with the intent of helping adolescents living in poverty by giving them skills to help them survive.”

And thrive.

Jordan enabled Cierra to take college entrance exams and apply to colleges for free, she said. The school taught her culinary skills she could use if her FBI dream doesn’t come to fruition.

“The most important life lesson I have learned is no one can help where they have come from, but they can help where they end up,” Cierra wrote. “No matter what a person’s life was like in the past, they can succeed in life.”

Jordan also taught her, Cierra wrote, “Hardship will always come, but it does not mean it is time to give up. It means it is time to fight harder than before to persevere.”

No wonder Cierra concluded her essay with this declaration about Jordan: “The school will forever matter to me.”

Callie Hecht, the foundation’s director of cultural outreach, called Cierra “an exceptional student. She’s overcome a lot of circumstances and still has kept her GPA very high. … She interviewed very well, and her essay was amazing.”

The foundation’s 12-person selection committee evaluated applications from 16 candidates and interviewed three finalists, Hecht said. The two other finalists are Columbus High School seniors Hope Skypek and Jaida Woodson. They were awarded autographed copies of “Images: A Pictorial History of Columbus” by local historian F. Clason Kyle.

This story was originally published May 11, 2017 at 2:11 PM with the headline "Historic Columbus awards $2,500 scholarship to UGA-bound Jordan valedictorian."