HAMMOND – Bishop Noll Institute senior Kennedi Edgington was one of a dozen high school students from Northwest Indiana who joined a total of 700 teenagers on a weeklong tour of Washington, D.C. in January.
Thanks to the local ECIER - which stands for Education, Communication, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Relationships – Foundation, which partnered with the Arlington, Va.-based Close-Up Foundation, the high schoolers visited monuments around the U.S. capital, toured government buildings and museums, listened to educational talks and participated in workshops that taught them how U.S. government operates.
They were outfitted with black blazers and puffy white winter parkas for the Jan. 16-22 trip, but because severely cold weather moved the presidential inauguration indoors to a small venue, they and 700 other young Close-Up Foundation guests instead witnessed the swearing-in on a video screen in a separate hall.
“They got to tour the Pentagon, the Capitol Building and the House of Representatives chambers,” said Chareice White, ECIER Foundation founder.
“My favorite place was the African American Museum, where the history and culture was very inspiring,” said Edgington, the daughter of Karen and Kenneth Edgington of Gary. She attended Banneker Elementary School through fifth grade, then transferred to Nativity of Our Savior for junior high before enrolling in BNI.
At Noll, Edgington is a member of the National Honor Society, Art Club, Black Student Union, Service Club and the band, participating in the color guard with the marching band and playing alto saxophone in the concert band.
Her interest in entrepreneurship is what drew Edgington top the ECIER Foundation, which is mentoring 40 high schoolers from Gary, Hammond, East Chicago, Portage and Munster this school year. The young people are mentored as they develop a prototype for a product they want to develop.
“We have eight seniors this year and out of the seven prototypes in our Shark Tank-like contest, there were three winners,” said White.
“My prototype was for a ceramic glaze scanner that can predict the outcome of the glazing process,” explained Edgington. “Right now, you do not know the color that will result after glazing.”
Edgington said the most impressive monument she visited in Washington, D.C. was the new statue of Martin Luther King Jr. “It had his famous quotes displayed, and it was so big that it was really impressive,” she said.
“During lunch hours we got to explore parts of the city and choose where to eat, which was very interesting, and I thought the trip was a really unique experience and I really appreciated it,” Edgington said. “It gave me a chance to reach out to people I would not have met in my normal environment.”
While Edgington knows she wants to become an entrepreneur, she has not yet chosen her next stop. “I’m interested in Ball State University, Arizona State University, Indiana University or Howard University,” she said. “I want to study civil engineering, and the STREAM (Science, Technology, Religion, Engineering, Art and Math) program here at Bishop Noll is really strong and helped me learn about different careers. Noll offers a lot of opportunities that other schools don’t always have to give their students.”
The 90 NWI students who have worked with ECIER during the past 11 years have benefitted from $250,000 in scholarship and headed to 26 different colleges and universities, noted White.