Hayes’ Dugasz ready for his future path

Erwin Dugasz

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON 

While not entirely cer­tain of where his future path lies, Hayes High School senior Erwin Dugasz does know he wants to go into either engi­neer­ing or math.

He also knows he wants to stay in Ohio and is con­sid­er­ing attend­ing either Bowl­ing Green, Miami, Cap­i­tal, Deni­son or maybe the Uni­ver­sity of Find­lay. His cri­te­ria for selec­tion, he said, are that the school he chooses has excel­lent math and sci­ence departments.

“I’ve always liked things sci­ence. I absolutely love sci­ence, and math goes hand in hand,” he said.

While march­ing band is a large part of his life at the moment, he is still on the fence as to whether he will par­tic­i­pate in band at the col­lege level. He enjoys band a lot, but he said, “I am not par­tic­u­larly an excel­lent musician.”

Erwin par­tic­i­pated in soc­cer dur­ing the first two years of high school and has been in march­ing band the last two.

“I kind of miss soc­cer,” he said. “I liked the adren­a­line rushes, but I have more of a cir­cle of friends in band.”

Being a senior is “bit­ter­sweet,” Erwin said.

“I’m happy it’s finally time to leave, but to leave my friends … I do not want to see them off.”

Until then, Erwin will con­tinue his busy high school sched­ule. His list of activ­i­ties includes his involve­ment in National Honor Soci­ety (NHS). There are numer­ous fundrais­ing activ­i­ties through NHS being con­sid­ered for char­i­ties as well as the induc­tion cer­e­mony to get ready for. Erwin also per­forms com­mu­nity ser­vice vol­un­teer work through the organization.

Erwin is in his first year on Hayes’ In The Know team. He had wanted to join the team last year, but band and National Honor Soci­ety kept him busy.

He is also involved with SPRE, the sci­ence of para­nor­mal research and explo­rations, which a friend began his fresh­man year. The focus of SPRE is prov­ing and dis­prov­ing com­mon para­nor­mal phenomena.

Another activ­ity that occu­pies Erwin is his work with the Epilepsy Foun­da­tion. His sis­ter has epilepsy. Vol­un­teer­ing with the Foun­da­tion, includ­ing for the Stroll for Epilepsy event, has allowed Erwin to meet other epilep­tics and to bet­ter appre­ci­ate how the dis­or­der impacts others.

“Work­ing with these young chil­dren gave me a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the strug­gle that many fam­i­lies face when they raise a dis­abled child, and how I can assist these fam­i­lies when­ever I am able,” he wrote for his Gazette essay.

Erwin also served on the Delaware County Bank stu­dent board of direc­tors last year. He said he found the expe­ri­ence “neat.”

“It was very inter­est­ing to see how a bank works. To learn about the dif­fer­ent kinds of mon­e­tary fraud as well as stocks and bonds,” he said.

Erwin would like to get a job before high school grad­u­a­tion. With all his vol­un­teer activ­i­ties, he has never had the time to hold an actual job.

Another sig­nif­i­cant event in Erwin’s senior year so far was his elec­tion to Hayes’ home­com­ing court.

“It was a bit of a sur­prise,” he said. “I wanted to see how I would do. I thought it would be inter­est­ing. I did not actu­ally expect to be on home­com­ing court,” he said.

Erwin is the son of Erwin Jr., and Pamela of Delaware.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Oct 15 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.