Valedictorian Lamont Newell, Who Battled Homelessness, Is Heading To Columbia University To Study Industrial Engineering – AfroTech

Lamont Newell is heading to an Ivy League school, and he’s already thinking of various ways to give back to the students coming behind him.

ABC News reports that Newell is a senior at Verbum Dei Jesuit High School, an all-boys school in Los Angeles. Newell is interested in technology and credits his biology teacher, who serves as a director on the robotics team, for supporting him on this path.

“She also nominated me, my sophomore year, to go to NASA in Houston, which actually sparked my engineering [interest],” Newell told the outlet.

Newell additionally has interest in sports, playing basketball, and building computers. This has allowed him to remain levelheaded amid challenges at home. He was homeless for a large portion of his childhood, he told the outlet.

“We’ve always been moving my whole entire life,” Newell explained. “I couldn’t give you an age where we were homeless because it was from a time span, but those were the main issues.”

Newell hasn’t allowed those circumstances to limit his future. He applied to 70 colleges and was accepted to 65. He will attend Columbia University on a full-ride scholarship, where he plans to study industrial engineering, according to ABC 7 Los Angeles.

“The main reason [I wanted to apply to so many schools] was my mom didn’t get to go to the college she wanted to go. She didn’t really get to apply as many as she wanted to. So my plan was … to do the direct opposite,” Newell, the valedictorian with a 4.4. GPA, said, according to ABC News.

Verbum Dei President Fr. Travis Russell commented, per the outlet:

“Great education is not a mystery. It is dedicated teachers, real relationships, corporate partners who believe in our students, high standards, and the formation of character. Lamont’s success is his own — but it also reflects the excellence and resilience of the entire Verbum Dei brotherhood.”

Looking ahead, Newell wants to study abroad in Egypt. He also wants to start a nonprofit that teaches children how to build computers and exposes them to different careers.

“One of my goals is actually to create an institution where I teach Black kids how to work in STEM,” Newell told ABC 7 Los Angeles.