Maui student honored with first annual Honsador $5,000 scholarship

A Maui student has been selected as the winner of the first annual Honsador Lumber $5,000 scholarship. Kaitlin Kitagawa, a senior from King Kekaulike High School, was hand-selected for the award by committee members for her academic excellence, community involvement, and extracurricular activities.

While enrolled in several AP courses, Kaitlin achieved a 4.667 GPA.

Outside of the classroom, Kaitlin was recognized for the Rural and Small-Town Recognition Award based on outstanding performance on PSAT scores. She also placed 2nd in the STEMworks Solutions Mahi Pono Agriculture Challenge for creating a solution to mitigate dust clouds and keeping citrus trees upright. In addition, she placed 1st at the International Neuromaker Challenge for creating a digit prosthetic band and was a finalist in the Local Letters for Global Change contest.

While maintaining a high level of academics, Kaitlin was also involved with her school’s extracurriculars. She has been President of the Jazz band, Pep band, and Concert band all four years of high school, President of the National Honors Society since 2021, President of the Lucky Clovers 4H Club, President of the Maui County Youth Officers, Student Senate class representative all four years, and Maui community band member – trumpet section leader from grades 5-12. 

Kaitlin plans to use the scholarship funds to attend college on the West Coast to major in engineering or mathematics.

Honsador plans to continue its awards and scholarship programs for the 2023-24 school year. Visit honsador.com/highschoolhero/ to learn more.