Anabelle Buhring and Madison Ruhl, seniors at Brush High School, have been named recipients of the State PEO Scholarship. The awards were two of just 15 awarded across Colorado, the selection committee recently announced. The scholarship foundation is awarding a total of $41,000 in funds for 2015.
The daughter of Anissa and Roy Buhring of Brush, Anabelle plans to attend the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley (UNC) in the fall, majoring in Theater Arts Design Technology with an emphasis in Costume Design and a minor in Dance. She has also applied for summer interning at UNC’s Little Theater of the Rockies to work in costuming for their summer productions. Recently, she was also awarded the UNC Provost and Legacy Scholarships.
Currently both a student and an assistant instructor at In the Spotlight Dance Company in Fort Morgan, Anabelle participates in ballet, jazz and hip hop, and teaches these as well as tap at the dance school. Since her freshman year, she has competed with In the Spotlight Dance Company’s Principals’ Competition Dance Team, also as a soloist in 2012, 2014 and 2015. She will perform in her senior recital in June.
As a high school student, she has been dually enrolled in Morgan Community College classes since Fall 2013, and taken private art lessons. She has also been in various organizations, including Student Council, Future Business Leaders of America, and Latino Leadership Club; an honor roll student throughout high school, earning her academic letter in 2012; and participated in cross country and track.
She was selected to attend the Colorado Rotary Youth Leadership Conference last summer and Las Chicas de Matematicas Summer Enrichment Camp at UNC in the summer of 2013. In addition, she volunteered the past two summers at East Morgan County Hospital in Brush, as well as Eben Ezer Long Term Care Center last summer. She has also volunteered for the Brush Community School Supply Drive since 2011.
Madison Ruhl is the daughter of Eric Ruhl and Carolyn Mickey-Ruhl and Lisa and Jeramy McNeely and plans to major in nursing at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs in the fall, with an eventual career goal of nurse practitioner.
She will graduate from Brush High School and receive her Health Science Technology Program completion certificate from Morgan Community College in Fort Morgan this spring, planning to take her Certified Nursing Assistant testing this summer.
Among her health-related activities and experiences are two years as a HOSA-Future Health Professionals member at MCC, serving as vice president her senior year and secretary her junior year. Madison was a state and national HOSA qualifier during both years, competing in Orlando, FL, in June 2014 in Epidemiology and will compete in June in Anaheim, CA, in Extemporaneous Writing.
She worked at Eben Ezer Care Center in Brush as a dietary aide for two years. She was recently also named as a Williams Family Foundation scholarship recipient.
Other activities included four years in Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) serving as president her senior year and secretary last year and Latino Leadership in 2012-2015. She was selected to National Honor Society in 2014.
She worked in various community service capacities with the MCC Health Science Technology Program and Blessings in a Backpack, the Sands Theatre fundraising dinner, and kindergarten service projects through FBLA. For the past several summers, she also worked for a local family-run business, Colorado Fireworks Company.