Judd Logan is my homeboy by Quinton McArthur

Every time I give a presentation about MIT, I always try to emphasize the quality of people here at The Institute. Judd Logan is yet another addition to this wonderful community. I really love this place. It’s all because of the people.

On another note, doesn’t the name “Judd Logan” sound like a super hero’s day name? Kind of like Clark Kent by day Superman by night. For the MIT people, Tony Stark a/k/a Ironman…….. Just my thoughts

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Thanks Matt ;-)

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From Cattaraugus Reservation To MIT

CATTARAUGUS INDIAN RESERVATION – A Western New York teen is one of only 1,000 high school seniors across the nation to have earned a Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Foundation Scholarship. And he comes from a place where college just isn’t in the cards for many kids.

Judd Logan was prepared to accepted a full academic scholarship to Syracuse University, until the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology offered a similar deal.

So in less than a month Logan will pack his bags for Boston.

It is not surprising that scholarship offers of such magnitude would come to someone like Logan. He did after all attain a 98.9 grade point average before graduating second in his class at Gowanda High School.

Nonetheless, Logan is going where very few from his home have, as a resident of the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation.

“I don’t know many people anywhere that went to MIT, so he’s a pretty big fish in a little pond right now, ” said his mother Lisa Maybee, who like her son grew up on the reservation and has called it home for her entire life save for a stint in the military.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, only about 13% percent of children who grow up on American Indian reservations attain a four-year college degree.

Logan would like to be a computer scientist or engineer. But after earning his degree he would also like to return to live on the reservation where, according to the U.S Census Bureau, 42% of people his age and younger live in poverty.

“I want to leave and experience everything and then bring my experience back and say (to kids) if I can do it, surely there’s other people who can,” Logan told WGRZ-TV.

It is remarks like that which make his already proud mother even more proud of her son.

“That’s something we both feel strongly about, …returning something back to the community … giving some people some inspiration. He’s amazing and I just don’t know where it comes from but that’s just who Judd is,” she said.

With MIT extending Logan a full-ride, he didn’t need the Gates Millennium Foundation scholarship he was also awarded to pay for his undergraduate degree. But the foundation has notified him that it will be kept in reserve for him to use for graduate school.

Click on the video icon to watch the story from 2 On Your Side Reporter Dave McKinley and Photojournalist Andy Golebiowski.