A Middlesex County girl, Rya Marie Struse, is this year’s recipient of Irvington-based Chesapeake Academy’s C. Jackson Simmons Award for History and English, the school announced this week. Rya is the daughter of Rosetta and Charles Struse. The award was established through the C. Jackson Simmons Memorial to recognize a student who has excelled in History and English.
“In middle school, students must learn to craft a thesis,” Chesapeake Academy Dean of Students Hillary Smith said. “Crafting a thesis is so much more than putting words together; it is so much more than writing a topic sentence. It requires analyzing the source material, understanding it, pulling out the threads, and ultimately, knitting them together into ideas of your own. It is extremely challenging. And this year, Rya Struse developed and honed this skill with newfound confidence. Her ideas became more original, fresher, a little riskier while her writing tightened and became more concise.”
