A Gaston College student was one of only 90 in the country selected for the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship.

Carolina Servin Leon said it feels surreal to have won the scholarship as a first generation college student.

When Leon was around five, her family left their hometown of Dalton, Georgia, and moved to Tlalchapa Guerrero in Mexico.

She and her family lived there until she was seven and during that time, Leon said they lived in fear of local gangs that ran the town.

That experience gave Leon a desire to protect whatever community she was part of going forward.

Her family relocated to Gaston County when she was in middle school, and Leon graduated from Stuart W. Cramer High School in 2023.

In her time at the college, Leon has conducted and presente

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