TACOMA, Wash. – Kelton Mock of Providence, Utah, and William Rathje of Lake Oswego, Ore., have been named University of Puget Sound Lillis Scholars, honoring them with the college’s most prestigious award for students who show extraordinary promise in academics and scholarship.
Lillis Scholars are recognized by Puget Sound for their academic excellence, passionate interest in ideas, and intellectual independence. The annual awards are funded by a $2.3 million gift by the Lillis Foundation in 2007 intended to assist students who show promise of outstanding performance during their undergraduate years and beyond.
Thirty students are invited to apply each year to become Lillis Scholars, out of a pool of nearly 7,000 applicants to Puget Sound. Mock and Rathje will become part of a cohort of eight Lillis Scholars named since the program began in 2008.
Kelton Mock is a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist and an Advanced Placement (AP) Scholar with Honor, having earned perfect fives on all of his exams. He is captain of the debate team and editor-in-chief of the newspaper at Logan High School, where he maintains a 4.0 GPA. He is active with the Logan Environmental Action Force, and he teaches bilingual GED classes.
Mock plays jazz piano and has participated in the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival and other competitions. He also plays classical bass and has earned spots in the All-State Orchestra and All-State Jazz Band. He plans to pursue both jazz and classical music at Puget Sound.
Mock spent his junior year living in the rural Costa Rican town of Turrialba with his family. While there he assisted graduate students with research on tropical bird migration and on beetles in coffee plantations. Kelton plans to study biochemistry and molecular biology at Puget Sound.
William Rathje attends Lake Oswego High School in Oregon where he is an AP Scholar with Honor and has been inducted into the National Spanish Honor Society. Rathje is president of his school’s drama club and co-authored a full-length musical with his brother that his school performed and that will be performed again at the Fertile Ground City-Wide Festival of New Work in Portland, Ore. in January 2012.
Over the last two summers, Rathje has conducted research at Oregon Health Sciences University, studying lens protein modifications that cause cataracts. As part of his work in the lab, Rathje co-authored an abstract that was presented at a meeting of the International Society for Eye Research. He also taught chemistry classes on spectrophotometry and biochemistry. He plans to pursue both science and theater at Puget Sound.
About the Lillis Scholar Program
The Lillis Scholar Program was established through a generous gift made by the Lillis Foundation of Castle Rock, Colo. Charles Lillis, former chair and chief executive of MediaOne Group and founding partner of LoneTree Capital Management, and Gwen Lillis, chair of the Lillis Foundation, Puget Sound trustee, and trustee of the University of Oregon Foundation, are the parents of Puget Sound alumna Jessica Baker Isaacs ’05. Each year two Lillis Scholars are selected from the incoming freshman class. For information about eligibility for the Lillis Scholar Program, contact the Office of Admission at 800.396.7191 or visit www.pugetsound.edu/lillis.
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