Ira Jones Middle School student in Plainfield receives scholarship

PLAINFIELD – Ira Jones Middle School eighth grader Alexandra Kwiecien is one of only 66 students nationwide chosen for the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s Young Scholars program.

The scholarship will help her and her family pay for secondary education at Culver Academy, a college preparatory boarding school in Culver, Indiana.

Kwiecien said her mother found out about the Young Scholars program two years ago, and she applied last year. She actually learned that she’d been chosen last fall, and has been talking to her advisor every two weeks and doing work to prepare for the transition to Culver in the fall, she said.

She applied to four private schools – as the foundation encourages, although she said she would have still gotten a scholarship had she chosen to remain in public school.

Kwiecien loves kids and wants to be a pediatrician and open her own practice someday, she said.

She is the student council co-president, a peer helper for the school’s FBI special education class, and a member of the math and drama clubs. She also volunteers at a nursing home.