Vanessa Lamoureux Earns Academic Excellence Award
Vanessa Lamoureux, a Northgate High School graduate and soon to be Cal Poly graduate with a bachelor's degree in liberal studies, earned the 2019-2020 Academic Excellence Award from the Cal Poly Liberal Studies Department. A select few students who achieve outstanding academic performance measured by cumulative grade point average receive the award.
Each year academic departments recognize student academic performance with the top-performing students often achieving perfect GPAs of 4.0.
Lamoureux credits her success to her love of learning, family support, and great educators at her high school.
"While in high school, I had some wonderful teachers who knew how to support their students in a way that helped them grow both academically and personally. Without those teachers, I definitely would not have had the educational foundation and tools I needed to succeed at Cal Poly,” said Lamoureux. “My parents have always supported me and have always been a constant source of encouragement in my educational journey,”
Liberal Studies is a major for students who are planning on becoming teachers. That made Lamoureux, who’s wanted to be a teacher ever since I was six years old, a perfect fit.
“I have a passion for learning and education, so it was very inspiring to be in a major and surrounded by faculty and students who feel the same exact way,” said Lamoureux. “Their dedication to education only fueled my own, and I feel extremely lucky that I was able to spend the last four years surrounded by people who love education and believe in it as much as I do.”
Lamoureux says she chose Cal Poly College of Science and Mathematics because she wanted to experience the "Learn by Doing" approach that the school has become synonymous with.
“I knew that if I attended Cal Poly I would constantly be in local elementary classrooms learning from actual elementary teachers, and that was very exciting to me!” added Lamoureux.
After graduating from Cal Poly, Lamoureux will attend UC Santa Barbara's Teacher Education Program, where she plans to earn a multiple subject teaching credential and master's degree in teaching.