Future First Citizen Scholarship Winners Announced 
at Annual Dinner

Lila Schreiber, a senior at Ashland High School, was awarded the fourth annual Future First Citizen scholarship, in memory of William R. Haas, former Chamber Executive and community visionary for Jackson County on Thursday, September 13th, during The Chamber's 88th Annual Meeting & Awards Banquet. The 45,000 scholarship was sponsored by Umpqua Bank. 

Umpqua Bank began the scholarship in 2004 and continues to grow the program with the aid of many local businesses that believe in higher education. These supporters include: The Chamber of Medford/Jackson County; Burrill Real Estate; LTM, Incorporated; Southern Oregon Goodwill Industries; Rogue Disposal & Recycling; S & B James Construction Management; Forest Capital Partners; Avista Utilities; Pacific Power; Answer Page; UBS Financial; Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield; United Risk Solutions Inc.; Jackson Travel; KOGAP; Red Robin and most importantly, Umpqua Bank. Together, these businesses procured $20,000 in scholarships that were presented this year.

The scholarship recognizes top students from Rogue Valley High Schools who, throughout their high school careers, demonstrated leadership abilities in community involvement and extracurricular activities. These attributes are consistent with a Future First Citizen of the Rogue Valley.

The response was tremendous, as 62 applications were submitted--nearly double the applications from previous years. Each of the 62 applicants was reviewed by a panel of judges. From the 62, 16 finalists were selected.

Lila enjoys tennis, guitar, traveling, Math Team, Model United Nations, journalism, fighting poverty through the Global Citizen Corps, a club she started, playing Frisbee, baking pastries and hanging out with her friends.  

"One of my favorite subjects in school," she says, "is government, because I find current events incredibly interesting and relevant and I think it's important to be involved with our community, country and the world, and also because I love my government teacher. I also enjoy math because I've always been a 'math person'. Math just makes sense to me. It's very rewarding to solve equations and to be able to use math to understand our world. Philosophy is another one of my favorite subjects because I love discussing ethics and reading about society.

Lila hopes to attend Yale. "I would love to go there but there are a handful of other schools to which I am planning on applying as well."