BURL BURLINGAME / BBURLINGAME@STARBULLETIN.COM Nikki Luong, center, was honored as the recipient of the Wallace Rider Farrington Memorial Scholarship during a reception Wednesday in the Farrington High School library. Luong is pictured with Charles Hite, left, great-grandson of Farrington, a founder of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and a former governor of Hawaii, and Mary Poole, right, editorial page editor of the Star-Bulletin.

Scholarship recipient to study engineering

The immigrant from Vietnam has a 4.0 GPA at Farrington

Nikki Luong has been named the 2006 recipient of the Wallace Rider Farrington Memorial Scholarship. The 18-year-old valedictorian at Farrington High School, with a 4.0 grade-point average, was honored during the school's annual scholarship reception Wednesday night in the school library.

Luong's family immigrated to the United States from Vietnam in 1995, when she was 7 years old. Luong is a member of the Farrington Math Team and has used her skills to tutor seventh-grade students at King David Kalakaua Middle School.

Luong said she intends to study engineering at the University of Hawaii and would like to break through the gender barrier in this male-dominated field. In her scholarship application, she wrote that her interest in engineering was sparked when she helped her father repair broken televisions and VCRs because her family could not afford to buy new ones.

The Farrington scholarship is awarded for academic merit. It is a $20,000 four-year, full-tuition scholarship to the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The award was established in 1943 by a Honolulu Star-Bulletin endowment to honor Wallace Rider Farrington, a founder of the newspaper and a former governor of Hawaii for whom Farrington High School is named. The scholarship fund is managed by the Hawaii Community Foundation.