With graduations beginning this week, another academic year is in the books for Lawrence County schools.

We would like to take the time to recognize students whose achievements this year particularly stood out:

• Seniors Shelby Zerkle, of Dawson-Bryant High School, and Gracie Stephens and Mackenzie Wise, of Symmes Valley High, who signed with Marshall University’s Marching Thunder marching band.

• Two teams of students from Chesapeake High School who are part of the Project Lead the Way engineering program. Working with the Blue Ink company in Huntington, they designed a prototype to activate sensors on the company’s trucks.

• Madison Griffith, of Ironton High School, who signed with the Eastern Kentucky University for a scholarship to be member of their award winning dance team. She was also chosen by the National Cheerleaders Association as an All Star at the 2018 Cheer Camp.

• Luke Hunter Humphreys, of Ironton High School, McKenna Pannell, of Fairland High School, and Tyler Shelton, of Ironton High School, who all won scholarships funded by Buckeye Rural Electric Cooperative.

• Hannah McKenzie, a South Point Middle School eighth grader, who not only won her school’s spelling bee and at the county level, but went on to place second in the regional bee in Athens in March. She was part of a group of five students to compete in regionals, one of the largest ever to qualify from Lawrence County.

• Bella Schraeder, of Tri-State STEM+M Early College High School, who was praised by faculty for an exceptionally high ACT score and also was accepted into a summer program at Yale University.

• Chad Morris, of Symmes Valley High, who was this year’s recipient of the National Wild Turkey Federation scholarship.

These are but a small sampling of what our students in this county have done in the past year. We congratulate all of them and know they have a bright future ahead.