Student Stories: Past Award Recipients

Sam Stiegler
Middleton High School
2002 Scholarship Recipient

After high school, I attended Tufts University in Boston. During my time there I worked extensively with the LGBT Center and petitioned the administration to add "gender identity and expression" to the university's non-discrimination policy, which was approved by the Board of Trustees in the fall of 2005. I also spent a semester abroad in Ghana, directed the Tufts Dance Collective, and facilitated the Queer Men's Group. When I graduated in 2006, the Tufts' queer alumni association, Pride on the Hill, awarded me the Pride on the Hill Award and Scholarship.

Currently, I'm completing my Master's of Arts in Teaching at Tufts. This past year I served as Teaching Intern at New Mission High School, in the Boston Public Schools. There, I wrote and received a grant to restart New Mission's Gay-Straight Alliance. Along with a group of dedicated student-activists, we planned the school's first Day of Silence and have started to raise awareness of the homophobia and the intersection of oppressions among the student body.

This summer I am planning a move to San Francisco to teach in the Bay Area. I know that my work combating homophobia and transphobia in schools will be a lifelong mission and I hope to empower many queer and ally youth to join me in the process.