Salisbury University students on campus

Scholar Holler Award

Each month the Center for Student Achievement recognizes an outstanding student for academic excellence. The student is highlighted on our website as a way to encourage other students to achieve their academic potential.

Faculty and staff are invited to nominate students for Scholar Holler. The nomination form should describe the student's academic accomplishments.

Scholar Holler Winners

  • October 2024 - Stephora Cesar Alberi

      Stephora Cesar

    Majors: Computer Science, Cyber Security and Computer Networks track

    Minor: Data Science and Mathematics

    Hometown: Salisbury

    Words of wisdom: My favorite Haitian proverb, "Sa ou fè se li ou wè", which translates to "What you do is what you see". It means what you see in life is from the results of your actions. Plant the seeds, nurture the dreams, and soon you’ll reap a vibrant reality.

    Dr. Kristen Walton said, "Ms. Alberi is an exceptional student with a strong record of academic achievements, awards, study abroad experiences, civic engagement, and research. Stephora is spectacular. She has become one of our campus leaders who also, while First Gen and a Pell Grant student with a family who immigrated to the US from Haiti (via the Dominican Republic), spends much of her time engaged with our community - she even set up a "scholarship group" for TRIO students to introduce them to scholarship opportunities. As a Black woman computer science major, she is a trailblazer for other students and has worked hard to build a community of support for her other students, including working on HenHacks and the Cybersecurity Accelerator program. She has engaged in extensive undergraduate research while on campus, and did a study abroad this summer in Estonia that was aimed for graduate students (she was one of 2 undergraduates) – that led her to her proposed Fulbright Scholarship.

    Her engagement with campus, though, goes far beyond her skills with machine learning to help the feature detection algorithms with the first Estonian Space Rover, a project she worked with this summer at Tartu. At Salisbury she worked with a faculty member working with Deep Learning for human facial emotion detection. She is taking some of the most challenging courses at SU.

    Stephora’s achievements and strengths go beyond the classroom. She was invited by the President’s office to speak with the Board of Regents this June and was one of the students featured in the President’s video for the State of the University address last month. She also is a Presidential Citizen Scholar working closely with PACE, investigating road safety on the West Side of town, which has been instrumental in improving safety in our community. She is an engaged member of several clubs on campus as well as with the TRIO student support center. I recently brought her on as one of my volunteer Fellowships Ambassadors due to her way of connecting with others in a warm and comfortable manner. Furthermore, to round out the rest, she is actually a Cellist and has played with PRESTO and found a band to play with in Estonia this summer. She is the real deal."