Posts by Saloma Furlong
How an Amish Boy Became a Physicist, Part 1
Today we bring you the incredible story of Leon Hostetler’s educational journey that took him from his Amish childhood to becoming postdoctoral fellow in the Physics Department at Indiana University. This story will be published in three parts. Early Life By Leon Hostetler As a young boy, I was fascinated with technology. This was…
Read MoreLearning How to Learn
We have been bringing you stories of current applicants of ADSF who have persevered to find their path to college or university. Today we bring you the remarkable story of Michael Walker, who grew up among the Swartzentruber Amish (the strictest of the strict) and became a software engineer. It is amazing that Michael has…
Read More“A Character that is Truly My Own “
Below is another essay by one of our scholarship applicants. This one is more personal for me because I knew her mother as a child. Even though Ruth did not speak of her home life, I often wondered if the image her family projected of being “good Christians” was different than the life inside their…
Read MoreA Chance for a Different Future
In our last post, we shared one of the outstanding scholarship essays that we received. Today we are offering another, this one from Anna Mae Troyer in Ohio. She does a beautiful job of introducing herself, so let’s go right to her essay. I have never authored an essay that is formed with the assumption…
Read MoreThe Gift of Learning
The ADSF team met to decide how to allocate the scholarship money to our record number of applicants this year — 19 in all. Reading the applications was an inspiring and moving part of our job as volunteers. One thing is for certain: those who have a childhood education limited to the eighth grade and…
Read MoreAny former Amish Entrepreneurs out there?
We’ve spent a lot of time engaging with former Amish students on their academic ambitions but today we’d like to hear from those of you who have left the Amish and started your own business. Since I’ve started working in business finance, I realize that good business practice starts with honesty, integrity and some common…
Read MoreCycling from London to Paris for ADSF
Tomorrow morning I’m setting out with two friends on the greatest physical challenge of my lifetime. We are cycling from London to Paris, a distance of close to 250 miles.I’m doing this for my birthday to raise money for the AD Scholarship Fund. We were able to give away $12,000 in scholarships this year so…
Read MoreAnnouncing our 2013 Scholarship winners!
What a difficult time we had choosing who should get the scholarships. We had such incredible applicants and of course – we just want to help them all! We ended up giving away $12,000 instead of $10,000 to stretch it a bit further. A hearty congratulations to the winners listed below. Please join us in wishing…
Read MoreApply Now for 2013 Scholarships
Thanks to our generous donors we have $10,000 of scholarships to give away this year and we are now accepting applications. If you grew up Amish and are pursuing a college education, please apply before August 10th to be considered. Now, we’re all ex-Amish ourselves and we know it’s not part of the Amish culture to…
Read MoreHappy New Year!
As the first year of ADSF pulls to a close, we’d like to give a special thank you to all of you for your donations and words of encouragement. We know there are many other charitable needs in the world and we sincerely appreciate all of you who contributed to ADSF. We created this fund…
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