Class of 2021 graduate Sina said she was “so honored and grateful” to receive the year’s Rose & Victor Rifkin Family Scholarship and Charlene Holmes Memorial Award. “I have big goals of owning a company that has strong ethical values and impacts my community for generations to come, and my first step in making that happen is to attend Boston University and study at the Questrom School of Business,” she said. (Photo: Janis Navikas)

Friends of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding opportunities at the city’s public high school, is in the process of presenting $71,250 in college scholarships to Cambridge Rindge and Latin School graduates. In addition to distributing $69,250 to 43 members of the Class of 2021, the nonprofit will be making installments of multiyear scholarships to awardees from the past three graduating classes. The grand total is an increase of $16,250 in its scholarship offerings over last year, made possible with the contributions of new and annual sponsors as well as numerous donors to the organization’s general scholarship fund.

Educational nonprofit Tutoring Plus is among the new sponsors, along with two families establishing scholarships in memory of their respective fathers: John D. Zagarella, Sr. and Richard S. Gilreath, and Cambridge Day, where editor and publisher Marc Levy decided to honor a colleague by establishing The Cambridge Day Sue Reinert Scholarship for Journalism. “I wanted to show at least in a small way that there was still support for a student who wants to go into such a difficult but idealistic field,” Levy said, “and I wanted to honor Sue Reinert, because she’s such a shining example of who reporters are. She retired from reporting long ago but now does it on a volunteer basis with work that informs her neighbors and holds institutions accountable. During the pandemic, she was often reporting multiple times weekly to provide insight on the situation in Cambridge that readers couldn’t get anywhere else.”

Scholarships range from $500 to $5,000 each. The highest is the CambridgeSeven Steam Award – the renowned architecture and design firm has committed $5,000 annually for 11 years to support the success of CRLS graduates committed to science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.

Criteria vary among the four dozen different scholarship titles and include applicants’ financial need, academic achievement, artistic accomplishment, commitment to a specific major or career field, athletic participation, community service, cultural background and being the first in their family to go to college. When deciding on recipients, FOCRLS evaluators also consider applicants’ personal essays, participation in extracurricular activities, jobs, internships, family responsibilities and histories of overcoming obstacles.

To learn more about FOCRLS, visit focrls.org or email [email protected].