UW-Parkside Students Earn RAREA Scholarships

Over the past two years, the Racine Area Retired Educators Association has awarded four UW-Parkside students scholarships in recognition of their hard work, dedication, and commitment to becoming professional educators. Each year one student receives RAREA/UW-Parkside scholarship and one student is given the RAREA/UW-Parkside Martenas Family scholarship.

Funding for the RAREA/UW-Parkside scholarship is provided by RAREA membership dues. The Martenas Family scholarship is funded by the Martenas family. These scholarships are intended to support and encourage junior students in the UW-Parkside Institute of Professional Educator Development program to achieve their goals of becoming teachers.

In 2019, the award’s inaugural year, Amy Hughes, a 2018 UW-Parkside graduate, was awarded the $3,000 RAREA/UW-Parkside scholarship. Hughes is now a 4th grade teacher at St. Joseph’s Catholic Academy in Kenosha. Brantina DaSilva was awarded $5,000 for RAREA/UWP Martenas Family scholarship and plans to teach math or science to middle school students after graduation. DaSilva has also worked as a volunteer tutor for readers in her son’s third-grade class, is one of four mentors in the IEPD program, and serves as board member and treasurer of the PTO at Riverview Elementary School.

This year, Sierra Sansudsavat earned the RAREA/UW-Parkside Scholarship and Kara Breidenbach won the Martenas Family Scholarship. Sansudsavat is committed to becoming an educator with a focus on ESL. She earned both dean’s list and provost’s list honor last semester, and is planning on earning her license in elementary education and English as a second Language in spring 2021. Sansudsavat tutors local eighth-grade students and volunteers as an English as a second language tutor for refugee students from Myanmar.

Breidenbach would to teach middle school English when she graduates. On top of her studies and being named to the dean’s list and provost’s list for last semester, she also works for the UW-Parkside Department of Admissions, served as an orientation leader and campus ambassador since 2018, is an editor for the Ranger News, and is an officer in the Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society. Breidenback also has experience with clinical placements at St. Catherine’s, Bradford, Gilmore Fine Arts and Waterford.