RoverPass Outdoor Entrepreneur Scholarship Winner – Spring 2018

We want to send a big thank you again to everyone who applied for the RoverPass Outdoor Entrepreneur Scholarship! There were over 100 applicants this time, more than twice the amount of last semester. With many outstanding essays, it was a difficult task to choose only one winner.

With that said, we’d like to congratulate the winner of the $1,000 Scholarship, Van Schuler!

Van has a passion to become a landscape architect, working with rock, wood and other materials to make them fit naturally and beautifully into their surrounding environment. As he put it, “I like the idea of creating something that looks like it has always belonged in its setting, yet wasn’t always there.”

In April of 2017, shortly after hearing the great news that he’d been awarded athletic and academic scholarships from Philadelphia University for baseball, the unimaginable happened.

Riding his bicycle home from baseball practice, Van was in an accident. After being rushed to the emergency room by ambulance, surgeons removed a section of his skull so that his brain could swell. His family was told he had a 50/50 chance of surviving the surgery and were told to say their goodbyes.

Van not only survived but has turned tragedy into a challenge that he is working hard to overcome. He’ll start attending Jefferson University in August 2018 for Architecture. We’re happy to make a contribution to his success.

Congratulations Van!