March 15, 2010
Vanderbilt’s Thomas Davis has won a $7,500 NCAA post-graduate scholarship as a result of his combined excellence in academics, community service and athletics.
Davis, a four-year cross country letter winner, has already been admitted to the Vanderbilt Medical School through its Early Acceptance program and will begin his medical studies in the fall of 2010. He will earn a Bachelor of Engineering honors diploma in Biomedical Engineering this May with a current cumulative GPA is 3.991.
“Thomas Davis represents the best of the best,” says Vanderbilt Vice Chancellor David Williams. “We strive for excellence on and off the athletic field of play and very few student-athletes have ever embodied this overall standard of extraordinary achievement more than Thomas. We are very proud of him; he richly deserves the NCAA’s award.”
Davis is an Ingram Scholar at Vanderbilt, an elite scholarship geared for gifted students, and has achieved SEC Academic Honor Roll three times and Vanderbilt’s Dean’s List seven times. He was one of the leading runners on the cross country team with several top ten finishes to his credit.
Away from athletics, Thomas has been involved in several notable service projects. He currently is working on the “La Escalera de Escalante,” which he founded and developed in the fall of 2007. The library is named after Jaime Escalante, a high school math teacher from Bolivia who taught calculus to poor minority students in Los Angeles (depicted in the movie Stand and Deliver).
La Escalera de Escalente consists of a bilingual library and literacy program that serves the needs of Hispanic children in grades six and lower who live in Nashville’s Clairmont Apartment Complex. Its purpose is to provide better access to books and to instill a passion for reading while encouraging bilingualism.
Davis’ efforts strive to lower acculturative stress (Hispanic adolescents have the highest rate of depressive symptoms among ethnic groups) and promote parental involvement, while allowing Hispanic children to develop their bilingual abilities.