HOUSTON – KPRC 2 and American Furniture Warehouse are surprising 20 deserving high school seniors with scholarships in 2024. All students selected for scholarships have been nominated by their high schools.
Zixi Chen is the seventh $2,500 scholarship winner of the year. Chen immigrated from China with her mother at 11 years old knowing only broken English and she worked hard to catch up with her peers. She is now ranked ninth academically among a class of 750 students at Katy High School.
Chen leads the Katy High School Theatre’s Costume Crew. A love of fashion also prompted Chen and her friends to create a fashion club at the school where they focus on creating clothing through sustainable means like thrift-flipping. Chen volunteers as a seamstress providing free alterations and crafting prom dresses for students in need.
Chen is President of Mu Alpha Theta and is also involved in Student Council, National Honor Society, National Art Honor Society as well as running her own small business selling the jewelry she creates.
To help fellow immigrants learn English, Chen developed an online tutoring program to teach language and life skills. That effort earned her the President’s Volunteer Service Award this year.
Chen plans to study History and hopes to become an elementary school teacher. Chen told KPRC 2′s Derrick Shore, “I feel like there’s an essential need to educate children about their own history as well as the history of other people in order to promote love, understanding and empathy.”
Houston Life co-host Derrick Shore talks about surprising Zixi Chen with this week’s KPRC 2 Senior Scholarship in the video clip below.
You can see the scholarship surprise for Zixi Chen in the video player at the top of this article.