Aiken Master Gardeners Association awards two local high school students with scholarships (2024)

Two local high school students have been awarded $1,500 scholarships by the Aiken Master Gardeners Association.

The group offers scholarships each year to high school students who have been admitted to a college and plan to major in a field relating to agriculture or horticulture. Scholarships are a minimum of $1,000 and will only apply to each student’s freshman year.

Since this scholarship program’s inception in 2013, 26 scholarships have been awarded.

“Our primary mission is education and this is the next generation, so they’re probably the most important reason we exist,” member Lynne Rhodes said.

Scholarship recipients were Morgan Coverson-Springs from Midland Valley High School in Aiken County and Whitt Miller from Strom Thurmond High School in Edgefield County.

Coverson-Springs, who has received her cosmetology license through the Aiken County Career and Technology Center, plans to attend Alabama A&M University to study Agriculture Science.

She said she chose this field of study because she wants to create more sustainable beauty products and “find better ways to cultivate them.”

Coverson-Springs referenced palm oil, a product widely used in many cosmetics, saying that it is a cause of deforestation. She said that she is driven to make a difference after “seeing something so small that’s in your daily body wash, your daily moisturizer, maybe your favorite lipstick, that hurts the community and the world so much.”

"It’s really important to put back in the earth what you want to take out of it,” she said.

Her mother, Trina Springs, spoke about the scholarship’s significance for her. “It means the world… it’s a different joy and pride,” she said. “The fact that they saw something in her just means a lot.”

Miller will be attending Clemson University where he plans to study landscape architecture. He said that Strom Thurmond High’s on-campus career center helped him navigate his future goals: “That’s something a lot of schools don’t really offer,” he said.

He was accompanied by his mother, Brandi Miller. “We were just very thankful because college tuition is very expensive,” she said . “We’re thankful that he was selected and that they’re recognizing him for his hard work.”