Olentangy Liberty’s Chhabria named 2012 Teen of the Year

Vivek Chhabria

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Along with May grad­u­a­tion, there is for area high school seniors a mul­ti­tude of events to attend cel­e­brat­ing the end of their high school careers. Among these is the annual Teen of the Week recog­ni­tion and ensu­ing announce­ment of the Teen of the Year.

This year, the long-standing com­mu­nity event was spon­sored by Colum­bus State Com­mu­nity Col­lege (CSCC) and the Delaware Gazette.

Selected on the basis of aca­d­e­mics, lead­er­ship and vol­un­teer activ­i­ties, Olen­tangy Liberty’s Vivek Chhabria was cho­sen from a group of 30 high-performing seniors from around the county to receive the honor and the $2,500 schol­ar­ship that accom­pa­nies it.

CSCC cam­pus dean Angelo Frole con­grat­u­lated all the award recip­i­ents gath­ered at the com­mu­nity college’s Delaware cam­pus, includ­ing the par­ents who sup­ported their chil­dren, as he wished them well in their futures not­ing “the world is get­ting smaller and the jobs are get­ting scarcer.”

Gazette edi­tor Devon Immelt echoed Frole in thank­ing the gath­ered par­ents for their role in rais­ing teens who excel.

In announc­ing the Teen of the Year, Immelt noted how dif­fi­cult it was to select the recip­i­ent from the list of impres­sive candidates.

Vivek said on receiv­ing the schol­ar­ship that he was “very, very sur­prised and very humbled.”

Vivek is pres­i­dent of his school’s National Honor Soci­ety, co-president of stu­dent coun­cil and active in the school’s ser­vice club where he vol­un­teers for a vari­ety of projects. He also vol­un­teers reg­u­larly at the APPIO Med­ical Clinic through his tem­ple on Hyatts Road. Other activ­i­ties include per­form­ing as dance cap­tain on an Indian dance group that per­forms com­pet­i­tively and play­ing on the school’s ten­nis team.

He plans to major in engi­neer­ing, focus­ing later in a par­tic­u­lar area. He is con­tem­plat­ing major­ing in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing in his under­grad­u­ate stud­ies and poten­tially going on to bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing as he pur­sues his master’s degree and doc­tor­ate. He envi­sions his life in both research and teaching.

Vivek said it is strange to be done with high school, yet he is excited to be going on to higher edu­ca­tion as he con­tin­ues his stud­ies at Ohio State University.

It was amaz­ing to hear all the things that all the other teens accom­plished, he said, the great ideas they had.

“These kids fit so much in their lives,” Vivek said of the accom­plish­ments of the group.

Other teens of the week from the 2011-12 school year include: from Delaware Hayes High School, Andie Moore, Erwin John Dugasz III, Vic­to­ria Bias, Cassy Cas­tle, Miriam Gibbs and Melissa Hur­ley; from Olen­tangy Schools, Sean DeLeon, Marta Kos­myna, Oliver Wang, Amanda Gu and Antoniya Gancheva; from Big Wal­nut High School, Con­nor Moran, Kather­ine Berger, Dar­ian Alley, Con­nor Jones, Jes­sica Stay­ton and Brit­tany Evans; from Buck­eye Val­ley High School, Jes­sica Harsh, Aubree Clase, Ali­cia James, Jaclyn Penny, Kevan Green and Rob Patzke; from Delaware Chris­t­ian School, Car­o­line Art, Ryan Zinn and Sarah Harp; and from the Delaware Area Career Cen­ter, Alexan­der Jok­erst, Alli­son Kelly and Vic­to­ria Simons.

Posted by Liz Robertson on May 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.