When Noah Stout was checking out the scholarship opportunity board at his high school, Forest Hills Central, one in particular caught his attention.
It was the Roger B. Chaffee Scholarship, awarded each year to a Kent County high school senior planning a career in engineering, mathematics or the sciences relating to space technology.
The scholarship was created to honor Navy Lt. Cmdr. Roger B. Chaffee, a Grand Rapids native who died along with two other astronauts in a flash fire aboard the Apollo 1 spacecraft on Jan. 27, 1967, during pre-launch testing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“I was applying to the Air Force Academy, so that one interested me a lot more than some of the others,” Stout said. “With Mr. Chaffee’s legacy, his career field, what he did as a person … I could see a lot of similarities between what he was trying to accomplish and what I value.”
On May 2, Stout will be honored as winner of the 2019 Roger B. Chaffee Scholarship at a banquet being held at the Grand Rapids Public Museum.
Interest in the sciences started early for Stout, the son of Mary Beth Stout and Randy Stout. As a kid, he was always reading books about dinosaurs, machines and chemistry, along with nonfiction science magazines he found at school and at home.
“I always had an affinity for that,” he said.
Those interests grew into honors mathematics and science classes in middle school, along with more hands-on study as he got older. His parents and grandparents “have always been supportive with whatever I wanted to do, and all my teachers along the way have been huge influences on me and my learning in that field,” Stout said.
Joseph Smith, an AP calculus and computer science teacher at Forest Hills Central, described Stout as a strong leader at the school, where he serves on student council and is involved in many extracurricular activities.
“His support and dedication are one of the reasons why his class has been so successful over the years,” Smith said. “He has taken to computer science like a fish to water. He has, on several occasions, written his own programs. He has come in with questions about advanced topics because he wanted to deepen his own learning. His natural inquisitive nature will suit him well as he spreads his wings in college.”
Stout had already been accepted to the University of Michigan’s engineering program when he learned last week, in a call from the office of U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Cascade Township, that he had been accepted to the Air Force Academy in Colorado. He plans to study chemical engineering there next fall.
Tracy Will, Stout’s algebra 2 and geometry teacher at Forest Hills Central, said he is “everything you hope your child will grow up to be.”
He is resilient, humble, and brings out the best in the people he works with, Will said.
“Noah is creative, and an incredible leader. Noah believes he is here to serve others, and that is so rare. We hear over and over that people these days feel a sense of entitlement. Noah Stout is evidence that there are hard-working, positive, confident, approachable teen-agers who will grow up to change the world.”
The tuition will be free at the Air Force Academy, Stout said, but the $3,000 Chaffee Scholarship funds will help pay other college expenses, such as the cost to come home to visit family while he’s away.
In addition to chemical engineering studies, Stout will train as a pilot at the Air Force Academy. If it turns out to be something he really loves, he said, he wouldn’t rule out the idea of traveling to space himself someday.
“With the way the world is changing, things are looking like they might start moving toward space. I’d very interested in the opportunity,” he said.