A commitment to serve underrepresented and community college students has earned a Cal Poly Pomona student a prestigious $6,000 scholarship.

Anthony Green, a second-year graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in educational multimedia, has earned the William Randolph Hearst/CSU Trustees Award for Outstanding Achievement and is recognized by the university system as this year’s first Chancellor Charles B. Reed Scholar. This scholarship is awarded to students who demonstrate superior academic performance, personal accomplishments and community service, and have overcome tremendous life challenges to pursue a college degree.

Green experienced hardship during his college years when he dealt with the death of a family member, but he made sure not to let it hold him back from achieving his goals.

“My father passed away when I was an undergrad,” he says. “It was a challenge and something I had to overcome.”

Green’s list of accomplishments includes volunteering as a career educational advisor and student mentor for high school foster youth at Kashif University, a music camp in Inglewood; and as a counselor for incoming graduate students at Cal Poly Pomona regarding career mapping and resume strategies. He also volunteers in the Compton and Long Beach school districts, where he teaches career and technical education skills to at-risk middle and high school students.

His personal struggles while pursuing higher education have helped Green to grow and understand the challenges of people with diverse academic, socioeconomic, cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Through his undergraduate education at UCLA, his graduate studies at Cal Poly Pomona, his mentorship and volunteer experiences, Green has developed and strengthened his career prospects. He wants to use his studies in educational multimedia as a springboard toward a career in which he can create interactive educational products.

The scholarship “will definitely help with tuition and will give me the ability to focus on creating materials for achievement in education,” Green says.

The William Randolph Hearst/CSU Trustees Award for Outstanding Achievement is awarded annually to only 23 students – one per CSU campus – and is provided with support from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, members of the CSU Board of Trustees and others.

The Chancellor Charles B. Reed Scholar award is named for the CSU chancellor, who has led the country’s largest educational system since 1998. He announced his retirement earlier this year.