LATROBE, PA – Saint Vincent College president Father Paul R. Taylor, O.S.B., has announced that Hempfield Area High School seniors Brennen Novotney and Jacob Rzempoluch will be awarded four-year, full-tuition scholarships as winners of Saint Vincent College’s 39th annual Wimmer Scholarship Competition.

Novotney and Rzempoluch were presented their scholarship awards in “prize patrol” fashion at Hempfield Area High School by Christina Andrae, Saint Vincent College associate director of admission.

Novotney, a native of Greensburg, has been accepted into Saint Vincent College’s Herbert W. Boyer School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Computing with plans to major in biochemistry, while he has also been accepted into Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine’s early acceptance program. A four-year honor student, AP scholar and member of Hempfield’s enrichment program, Novotney serves as secretary of the National Honor Society, while he is also a member of the Science National Honor Society and Interact Club. He is a four-year member of the Hempfield cross country team and has played on the Spartan tennis team, while this spring, he is competing in track and field. Active in the community, he has volunteered at Feeding the Spirit, Outdoor Odyssey, the Salvation Army, You’ve Got a Friend Day and at Redstone Highlands senior living community.

Novotney’s parents, Nathan and Theresa, as well as his grandfather, Frank, are all graduates of Saint Vincent College, while he has two younger brothers, Justin and Colton, and one younger sister, Gianna. They are members of the Blessed Sacrament Cathedral Catholic parish in Greensburg.

Rzempoluch, a Greensburg native, has been accepted into the Saint Vincent College School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and is considering studying Spanish. The Greensburg native is in Hempfield’s enrichment program and is a four-year honor student and member of the National Honor Society, Spanish Honor Society and the Interact Club, while competing for four years on the Hempfield cross country and track and field teams. As a youth, Rzempoluch was an active member of the Boy Scouts, having served as senior patrol leader and earning the rank of Eagle Scout, and is now a registered leader of his former troop.

The son of Michael and Tammi Rzempoluch, he has one younger sister, Jeanna, and is also a member of the Blessed Sacrament Cathedral Catholic parish, where he was an altar server and active in youth ministry.

The Wimmer Scholarship program is named after Archabbot Boniface Wimmer, who founded Saint Vincent College in 1846 as the first Benedictine college in the U.S. The program recognizes high school students with outstanding academic abilities and encourages them to pursue a quality undergraduate education at Saint Vincent College.

The scholarship winners are based on their performance of a written examination administered at Saint Vincent in November. Students who participated in this year’s exam were college-bound and met the academic qualifications of a minimum 3.25 grade point average and 1170 SAT/24 ACT. This is the 39th year of the scholarship competition.

Saint Vincent College is a four-year, coeducational, Catholic, liberal arts and sciences college sponsored by the Benedictine monks of the Saint Vincent Archabbey. A diverse student population of undergraduate and graduate students hails from 31 U.S. states/territories and 10 foreign countries.

Saint Vincent’s approach to education is rooted in a core curriculum that provides all students with a broad-based education which provides a general body of knowledge in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics, and interdisciplinary view of that knowledge base and the skills to increase that general body of knowledge throughout their lives.

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PHOTO 1: Brennen Novotney (left) and Jacob Rzempoluch

PHOTO 2 (from left to right): Nathan, Brennen and Theresa Novotney

PHOTO 3: Tammi (left) and Jacob Rzempoluch

A full photo gallery from the scholarship presentation can be found on the Saint Vincent College Flickr account.

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