Colfax-Mingo senior earns Iowa Governor’s Scholar honors

Colfax-Mingo recently announced its 2020 Iowa Governor’s Scholar nomination which recognizes a senior student, or students, for their outstanding academic achievements and recognizes them with a plaque and a ceremony, which has been canceled due to coronavirus.

C-M High School principal Todd Jones said each year they are able to nominate a student to which the governor’s office then recognizes them as governor’s scholars. Jones said C-M is able to choose one student each year. This year C-M nominated senior Nyika Masga.

“I just think that she is a great representative of Colfax-Mingo and I am very, very proud of her,” Jones said.

Masga will receive a plaque commemorating her honor as an Iowa Governor’s Scholar as well as a certificate she can give to a teacher who she felt was the most influential to her. Masga said she plans on giving that award to CM teacher Korie Whiteman.

“She was just really helpful and she would stay late and work with me on things I didn’t understand,” Masga said.

The award Whiteman said didn’t really come as a surprise to her. Whiteman said Masga cares about how she performs in school and she also cares about how her friends and other people close to her are doing in school as well.

“Honestly, it feels really good because I have had her for all four years of high school and she is close with a lot of teachers so I’m not the only influential teacher by any means to her but it feels really good to be recognized by her for that,” Whiteman said.

While Masga won’t get to experience the traditional graduation experience being honored as an Iowa Governor’s Scholar is something Masga wants other people to look at and see that hard work does pay off.

“A lot of times it’s not going to feel like a big deal or that you’re not doing much but as long as you’re just working hard for yourself and doing what you can it will pay off,” Masga said.

As Masga moves from high school into the next phase of her life and she is having a hard time choosing what she should do next. Masga said she is debating on going to college, like Simpson College, or whether she should just start working.

“If I go to Simpson it is going to be for business management or I’m thinking about going to DMACC and doing an associates degree to become a paralegal,” Masga said.

Each year the Iowa Governor’s Scholar program recognizes those top academic seniors as they begin to move forward into the next journey’s of their life and showcases how far hard work can go in the classroom.

“If you apply yourself and really just push yourself you can open doors for yourself that you didn’t think we there,” Whiteman said.

Contact Dustin Teays at 641-792-3121 ext. 6533 or dteays@newtondailynews.com