Contact: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Monday, July 13, 2009

The National Merit Scholarship Corp. has announced an additional 2,000 winners of awards financed by colleges and universities, including seven scholarship recipients from Fayette County Public Schools.

From Henry Clay High School:

• Alexander Dutch, engineering, Michigan State University
• Jared Gibson, undecided major, Denison University
• Daniel Richey, law, University of North Carolina

From Lafayette High School:

• Brittany Fenner, surgical medicine, Furman University
• Evan Shirley, physics, Centre College
• Qing Xie, medicine, University of North Carolina

From Paul Laurence Dunbar High School:

• Tessa Cavagnero, writing/poetry, Knox College

Officials at each college selected their winners from among finalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program who will attend their school. College-sponsored awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study. This year, 201 colleges and universities sponsored more than 4,800 Merit Scholarship awards.

This final group of winners brings the number of 2009 National Merit Scholars to about 8,300 students, who will receive scholarships for undergraduate study worth roughly $36 million.

In the spring, the National Merit Scholarship Corp. released the winners of corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarships, National Merit $2,500 scholarships and the first group of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards.

For more information about the program, visit www.nationalmerit.org/.