Senior Wins Fellowship and $10,000 Scholarship

November 23rd, 2009

By Sarah Pride

CONTACT:

David Halbrook Patrick Henry College (540) 441-8722 OfficeOfCommunications@phc.edu

Senior Jordan Spencer at work on a campaign

In his years as a Patrick Henry College student, senior Jordan Spencer has volunteered on over a dozen political races, as well as two successful student body president campaigns.  His propensity for “never turning down an opportunity to work on a campaign” has now been rewarded with a $10,000 fellowship and scholarship to George Washington University in D.C, where Spencer will pursue a Master’s program from the Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM).

An announcement on the GSPM webpage provides an overview of Jordan’s collegiate campaign activities, noting how he “ran a meticulous and innovative Student Body President and Vice Presidential campaign. He brought new meaning to ‘grassroots organizing’ by creating Google Spreadsheets to track every single student at his school. He and his staff used the sheets to track everything, including get out the vote (GOTV) efforts and voting. He organized parties in every residence hall and utilized all new media devices available. Most impressive was his reading of popular opinion. At the end of the day, his candidates won with 53% of the vote, a school record.”

For some of the political races in which he participated over the last several years, Spencer led Student Action Teams of high schools students for Generation Joshua. During Governor Huckabee’s bid for U.S. President, Spencer served as homeschool director for the state of Iowa and then on Huckabee’s advance team for South Carolina.

Spencer, who was already considering GW, said he’s looking forward to his graduate program with anticipation. Campaigning, he says, fulfills a God-given gift.

“Some people just excel in an area without any questions and without much guidance. For me, that’s campaigning,” says Spencer. He quips, “I’ve always believed that 90 percent of politics is boring—and the other 10 percent is campaigning.”