First Raymond E. Plotkin Scholarship Awarded

Sean Chavez

Last year fresh­man Ray­mond Plotkin was doing well in school, mak­ing friends and hav­ing fun when he died sud­denly from the H1N1 flu. The fam­ily hon­ored their son’s mem­ory and his love of UNM with an endow­ment to spon­sor schol­ar­ships for engi­neer­ing stu­dents. Recently they awarded the first Ray­mond E. Plotkin schol­ar­ship to Sean Chavez, a 2010 grad­u­ate of Albu­querque High School and com­puter engi­neer­ing stu­dent at UNM.

The Plotkin fam­ily selected Chavez from a num­ber of out­stand­ing stu­dents, say­ing, “We feel that Sean is the most appro­pri­ate first recip­i­ent of the Ray­mond E. Plotkin Schol­ar­ship due to his out­go­ing per­son­al­ity, moti­va­tion and desire to work towards success.”

Chavez said, “I read Raymond’s biog­ra­phy and was truly touched by the gen­eros­ity and kind­ness he dis­played through­out his life. My goal for a long time has been to be very much like Ray­mond, a kind, gen­er­ous per­son who helps oth­ers as much as possible.”

Ray­mond was a native of Hous­ton, Texas, and came to UNM in the fall of 2009 to study nuclear engi­neer­ing.  Dur­ing his short time at UNM, he was involved in the His­panic Engi­neer­ing Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tion (HESO), the Amer­i­can Nuclear Engi­neer­ing Soci­ety (ANES) and the Jew­ish cam­pus orga­ni­za­tion, Hil­lel.  A healthy young man, Ray­mond had been vac­ci­nated against the sea­sonal flu, but con­tracted the H1N1 virus and died before those shots became avail­able to the gen­eral public.

Last year, the Plotkin fam­ily encour­aged every­one to take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­nity to be vac­ci­nated against the flu. This year they are doing the same. It’s even eas­ier to get pro­tec­tion from the H1N1 virus, as it is included in this year’s sea­sonal flu shot which is read­ily avail­able at area phar­ma­cies and clin­ics.  Here is a sched­ule of free flu shots.

UNM Health Sci­ences Cen­ter is offer­ing free flu shots for NM Stu­dents, Staff and Fac­ulty (any­one 18 years old and older) from 10 a.m. — 2 p.m. at the SUB Atrium on Thu., Sep. 30, 2010, Wed., Oct. 20, 2010 and Thu., Oct. 28, 2010. UNM Health Sci­ences Cen­ter will offer free flu shots for the pub­lic in Sep­tem­ber and October.

Dona­tions to the Schol­ar­ship Fund

The Ray­mond E. Plotkin Schol­ar­ship is endowed; only the inter­est on the fund is awarded each year so that the schol­ar­ship can be awarded in per­pe­tu­ity.  Future dona­tions to the fund will be added to the prin­ci­ple and increase the amount awarded each year.  Dona­tions to the fund should be made payable to the UNM Foun­da­tion (memo Ray­mond Plotkin Schol­ar­ship) and mailed to Court­ney Gans­tine, UNM School of Engi­neer­ing, MSC01 1140, 1 Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico, Albu­querque, NM 87131. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please call 277‑0664 or email  courtg@unm.edu.

Media con­tact: Karen Went­worth, (505) 277‑5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu