NPG Awards $30,000 in Scholarships for the 2023-2024 Academic Year

• NPG
• July 18, 2023
• Press Releases
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Eighteen Students Will Receive Awards for Essays Related to Overpopulation

Alexandria, VA (July 18, 2023) – Negative Population Growth leaders have announced this year’s annual Essay Scholarship Contest winners. Soon, eighteen students from across the U.S. will receive awards ranging from $5,000 to $1,000 to help with their tuition and other expenses.

This year, the winning graduate students competed for the scholarship awards by writing an original 750–1,000 word essay addressing the provided prompt. Graduate students were asked to consider a future in the U.S. with an additional 70 million people and to discuss the aspects of their lives that would be most affected by such a significant increase in human population. Graduate students were also asked to include their thoughts on whether or not the U.S. government should encourage policies designed to reduce population growth to a more sustainable level.

High school seniors and undergraduate students competed for the scholarship awards by writing an original 450-600 word essay addressing the provided prompt. Seniors and undergraduates were asked to consider what life in the U.S. would be like with 70 million additional people over the course of 40 years. They were then asked to describe three aspects of their lives that would be most affected by this growth. 

The Donald W. Mann Memorial Scholarship for Population Studies, named in honor of NPG’s late founder and president, has been awarded to Alex Blake, a graduate student at the University of Nevada. He will receive the grand prize of $5,000 for his essay entry in NPG’s Graduate Student Essay Scholarship Contest.

Theresa Mickendrow, NPG’s longest-serving employee, worked with Don for nearly 28 years. She fondly remembers Don’s commitment to education by stating: “Don fully understood that young people have incredible influence over our shared future. He knew that NPG must communicate with young adults while they are still determining their values and goals for the next 50 years of their lives and instill in them the belief that population size and growth play enormous roles in the health of our nation. By offering multiple scholarships, NPG encourages young people to examine U.S. demographic trends carefully and to make sustainable choices. Our goal has always been to change how Americans view population growth in the U.S. Young people are no exception to that goal.”

Additional graduate winners include Veronica Irwin from NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, who won $2,500.  Two $1,500 scholarships were awarded separately to Ashlyn Puckett from Georgia State University College of Law and Leanne Deng from Georgetown University.  An additional four graduate students each received a scholarship award of $1,000: Brian Lum from the University of Arkansas, Grace Katzmar from Columbia University Teachers College, Lorena Diaz from Strayer University, and Michael Soaries from Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Undergraduate winners include Peter Sloniewsky from Georgetown University, who won the top undergraduate prize of $2,500.  Three students won a $2,000 scholarship: Curtis Halpin from Penn State University, Amanda Jorjorian-Furcho from Valencia College, and Morgan Pursley from the University of Tennessee.  Two students won a $1,500 scholarship: Sebastian Henson from Lake Forest College and Connor Karpilovsky from St. Joseph’s University.  And an additional four students received scholarships of $1,000: Simran Bhogle from Irvine Valley College, Madelyn Heckert and Domnica Reutov, both from Portland State University, and Phoebe Williams from Ohio University.

This year’s prizes are just a portion of the hundreds of thousands of dollars of scholarship money that NPG has awarded since 2006 as part of its Youth Outreach program.  This multi-faceted program is designed to get America’s young people focused on the disastrous future that awaits their generation if our nation’s leaders fail to recognize and act on putting forth workable, responsible, common-sense solutions to today’s ever-growing population crisis.

Along with sponsoring the annual student scholarship competition, NPG has worked through the years with thousands of teachers nationwide who help bring facts about population to America’s classrooms.  These efforts are funded through the generous support of NPG members who are especially interested in leaving a livable world to their children and grandchildren.

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