City Colleges of Chicago is proud to announce that all three of the Illinois recipients of this year’s Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship are from City Colleges of Chicago. Rencie Horst, Dominika Panek, and Selvin Tobar of Wilbur Wright College have been selected for the prestigious transfer award, which supports community college graduates as they pursue a bachelor’s degree. The Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship provides up to $55,000 per year to help students pay for their tuition, living expenses, books, and other fees at a four-year college or university.  The three City Colleges recipients plan to transfer to the following institutions:

• Rencie Horst – Transferring to Loyola University Chicago to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work

• Dominika Panek – Transferring to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to earn her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering

• Selvin Tobar – Transferring to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to earn his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering

All three students will earn their associate degrees from City Colleges of Chicago this spring before transferring to the institutions named above in the fall. Dominika and Selvin are part of Wright College’s Engineering Pathways program, which provides participating students with guaranteed admissions to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and other top engineering schools. Rencie, a returning student who was motivated to change careers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has been studying social work at Wright. They were selected from a pool of more than more than 1,700 students from 448 community colleges.

Photo Caption: Rencie Horst (left) and Romell Murden-Woldu, dean of student services at Wright College, pose for a photo at City Colleges of Chicago’s 2023 Commencement Ceremony for associate degree earners
Photo Credit: City Colleges of Chicago