Richmond-Area Student Leader Wins UVA’s Coveted Sky Alland Scholarship

C. Malcolm Stewart, a student leader inside and outside the classroom, has won the University of Virginia’s Sky Alland Scholarship.

Stewart, from Midlothian, rose to the top of a multistep selection process that uses criteria of leadership, achievement, enterprising spirit, humility and devotion to the University to recognize a rising fourth-year student who embodies “a can-do attitude and bias for action.” The award will cover his full tuition and fees for the next academic year, plus a stipend.

Stewart, a student in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, is majoring in public policy with a minor in social entrepreneurship. He’s a fellow in UVA’s Meriwether Lewis Institute for Citizen Leadership.

Beyond academics, his accomplishments include election as president of UVA’s Class of 2018, and service as both a University Guide and a dormitory resident adviser; he has been selected as senior resident adviser for the Lawn for the 2017-18 academic year, a leadership honor that will allow him to live in the University’s Thomas Jefferson-designed “Academical Village.” In his spare time, Stewart participates in the University Salsa Club.

The merit-based Sky Alland Scholarship is one of UVA’s most competitive undergraduate scholarships. A committee of eight fourth-year students, appointed by the dean of students, winnows applications to six finalists it recommends to the scholarship’s selection committee, which consists of UVA alumni, many of them past Alland Scholarship recipients.

The scholarship is named for J. Schuyler Alland, a 1979 graduate of the McIntire School of Commerce and entrepreneur who built a successful national marketing research company before he was killed during a carjacking in 1992.

“This is not a Sky look-alike competition,” said Kent Sullivan, who chairs the Sky Alland Scholarship Endowment. “Over the years, our winners and finalists have represented a great diversity of leadership roles, activities and backgrounds. Enterprising spirit can take many forms.”