Hardin Valley Academy senior wins four-year UT-Battelle scholarship

Meredith Graves, a senior at Hardin Valley Academy, is the recipient of the 2013 UT-Battelle Scholarship to the University of Tennessee.

The four-year, $20,000 scholarship, presented annually to a graduating senior with a parent who works at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is awarded annually to an outstanding student who plans to study science, engineering, or mathematics at the University of Tennessee.

Graves, daughter of Van and René Graves of Knoxville, has already been accepted into the University of Tennessee’s Bachelor of Architecture program, where she hopes to apply her interest in STEM-related fields to the design of energy efficient and environmentally friendly structures.

“I hope to learn the environmental impacts of certain aspects of designing and constructing buildings and what solutions have been created to lessen harmful consequences on the environment,” Graves wrote in her application essay.

Graves received the Hardin Valley Academy’s STEM Engineering Award this year. She has also been active in the Student Government Association, Technology Student Association, Sigma Tau Phi, and the National Honor Society. Outside interests include the Dance Centre of Knoxville, the Oak Ridge Civic Ballet, and the youth group of the First Baptist Church of Powell.

Her father, Van Graves, is a member of the Remote Systems group within ORNL’s Nuclear Science and Engineering Directorate.

The UT-Battelle scholarship is a competitive award, distributed in $5,000 increments over four years of undergraduate study at UT. ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.