Nyree Doway, 17, not only got the Rotary Club of St. John scholarship. She has a slew of others to help launch her academic career at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J.
“She’s determined, and that impressed us,” Rotary Club member John Fuller said.
Rotary awards the scholarship based on financial need, scholarship, community service, an essay, and an interview. Fuller said Doway was the best out of four applicants.
She also captured the $2,500 one-year Ruby Rutnik scholarship, a Board of Education $5,000-a-year scholarship, the Junior ROTC $1,500 scholarship that came with a laptop computer, and a $16,000-a-year-scholarship as well as other financial help from Rider that totals $145,000 over four years.
“That was the deciding factor,” she said, discussing why she picked Rider.
She also liked the school’s welcoming atmosphere, including the fact that an advisor takes them shopping for winter clothes.
She said Rider recruits students from the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. It goes so far as to have a special orientation that happens right before school starts so students don’t have to travel twice. Other incoming students attend orientation in early August.
Doway plans to study accounting with a minor in marketing, but she’s not sure which of the field’s branches will become her career. She did an internship at Innovative that exposed her to many facets of the accounting business.
And while a master’s degree might be in her future, she said she plans to extend her education to include Rider’s five-year program, which results in a certified public accounting degree.
She is a member of the National Honor Society based on her good grades at Ivanna Eudora Kean High School. While at Kean, she participated in the University of the Virgin Islands Upward Bound program, which had her trekking out to the St. Thomas campus on Saturdays to give her an edge when it came to her studies. She also enrolled in Kean’s Academy of Finance to further enhance her business knowledge.
Doway helped fundraise for the American Red Cross, worked on Kean’s yearbook, and is a member of the Unity Dancers, a Methodist Church-sponsored pantomime group on St. John.
She said she loves to travel, visiting family and with groups to places such as New York, New Orleans, Miami, Pennsylvania, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.
As for her future, it’s still up in the air but she’d like to return to St. John and open an accounting firm. She said she also dreams of working for the FBI investigating financial crimes.
Born at what is now Roy. L. Schneider Regional Medical Center on St. Thomas, because St. John doesn’t have a hospital, she graduated from Julius E. Sprauve School with second honors.
Her father is Evans Doway, her brother New York resident Dimitri Vaughn, 22, and her mother, DeJenne Daniel.
“I’m extremely proud of her. She always tried her best to excel in high school,” Daniel said.
Daniel said her daughter is very compassionate, pitching in to help when her grandmother was ill with diabetes.
Taking the 7 a.m. school ferry from Cruz Bay to Red Hook kept her busy but she said she still found time to hang out with friends and enjoy the beach at her favorite, Maho Bay.
“It’s really pretty and it’s quiet,” she said.
Doway had advice for those still in school. She said they should always try to do their best because nothing is impossible.
“But cherish every moment,” she said.
She said she looks forward to attending Rider but acknowledged that she’s nervous in part because she’ll be in New Jersey without family and friends.
“But I’ll be meeting new people and having new adventures,” she said.
