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Mostly Cloudy Rebecca Borja awarded $5,000 business scholarship
Rebecca Borja, a Baldwin High School senior, captured first place in Molloy University’s business boot camp this summer, and was awarded a $5,000 scholarship.
Each year, the high school’s guidance department encourages business-savvy juniors to apply to the boot camp. “I was so thrilled to learn that Rebecca won first place, but certainly not surprised,” said Neil Testa, principal at the high school. “She is a prime example of how our students excel in our Academy program and benefit from our collaboration with Molloy University.”
Borja, who is passionate about business, takes the Global Business & Entrepreneurship Academy and Virtual Enterprise class, and is a member of the National Honor Society, Future Business Leaders of America and Mathletes. She was grateful, she said, to be selected for the Molloy program.
“The experience was one of a kind,” she said. “It convinced me that I should continue my education at Molloy University. Not because I received the scholarship, but because the staff and students blew me away with their connection and trust.”
Participants in the boot camp are high-achieving juniors who plan to major in business. The program runs throughout the summer, and students are challenged with interactive seminars with Molloy’s faculty of former treasurers and CFOs of major businesses, who offer invaluable career coaching.
There is no charge for the program, but to be considered, juniors must submit an application and sit for an interview.
“Rebecca is unreal,” said Dawn DiStefano, associate dean of Molloy’s School of Business. “She was just such a well-rounded individual that she rose to the top.”
The program, DiStefano said, offers a variety of lectures and competitions four days a week, in keeping with the four pillars of Dominican life, the values that ground the university’s curriculum: community, study, spirituality and service.
“We’re exposing them to all areas of business in a friendly, university environment,” she said. “They’re working with live clients, and they don’t want to let them down.”
The boot camp features a number of unique learning opportunities, including the Lion’s Den, an entrepreneurial business pitch competition; trading simulations; business presentation; and marketing competition. Participants compete in teams for a variety of prizes.
For example, the Buy, Sell, Hold game — which is taught in finance classes — teaches students how and when to buy and sell stocks. The boot camp emulated the game, but players use pieces of candy to trade with.
The students also have the opportunity to network with Molloy’s student ambassadors, who have had real-world experience through internships. The ambassadors assess the program participants, focusing on their character, networking abilities and more.
At the end of the program, three students are chosen, based on the ambassadors’ and Molloy deans’ observations, for special scholarships, and Borja’s was the biggest prize of the three.
“Yes, I made my family members proud,” she said. “Yes, I was elated by the good news. But what I took away from this experience is when someone wants to achieve something, small aches and pains do not exist.”
Borja said she learned that if her mind is prepared to move forward and achieve her goals, then the minor obstacles she encounters along the way are nothing. She said she now has business ideas that she intends to pursue, as she adds to her skills.
Outside school, she is a coordinator of the Windsor Avenue Bible Church food pantry, and is thinking of ways to enhance the assistance the parish can provide to those in need.
She said she wants to start her own nonprofit that collaborates with restaurants and churches to better serve the needs of the community.
Her hope for this business, she said, is for community members to know that there is someone out there for them when they feel alone.
Borja said she was thankful to Testa, as well as the deans and professors at Molloy, and everyone who was part of the boot camp program, for the opportunity to participate.
“You have all planted a seed in the students and trained us academically for university,” Borja said. “I have never felt prouder to answer the question, which school do you go to? Thank you, Baldwin!”
Working with the staff and instructors at Molloy, she said, made her feel like someone with unlocked potential. Although she is applying to several other universities, her main goal is to be an alumna of Molloy.
