We are proud to announce that INDS senior Samantha Hawkins was crowned Miss Baltimore! As Miss Baltimore, Samantha serves as a positive role model for youth and an ambassador for the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. She
travels throughout Maryland as a representative of the Miss Baltimore and Annapolis Scholarship Organization and Miss Maryland Scholarship Organization raising money for local charities, performing her talent, and speaking at community events.

Samantha's mission is to raise awareness and funding for her personal platform of "Alleviating the Effects of Poverty through Volunteering." She is a weekly volunteer at the St. Francis Neighborhood Center, a community center in the Reservoir Hill neighborhood of Baltimore City, where she is actively involved in helping low-income families. She established the Food Resource Program which is a free program in Reservoir Hill to provide a monthly free bag of groceries to needy families. Samantha is beginning to embark on a state-wide campaign to expand the Food Resource Program to serve other impoverished communities throughout the state.

Samantha's INDS degree is titled "Visual Research Methodology". Her second major is Cultural Anthropology and her minot is in Art History. She is a member of the Honors College, is a President's List habitué (with a cumulative GPA of over 3.9!), is proficient in French, and is a frequent student representative for on-campus events. She is a Maryland Delegate Scholar and a recipient of the Walter Sondheim Jr. Nonprofit Leadership Scholarship, among other academic scholarships. In 2012 and 2013 Samantha was awarded the Miss America Academic Award.

Samantha was recently accepted as a Corps Member for Teach for America. She will be teaching elementary education in Baltimore City beginning in August 2014. In addition to teaching, she will concurrently pursue her Master's degree in Elementary Education at Johns Hopkins University.

Congratulations, Samantha! And best wishes to you at the Miss Maryland pageant in June! You can follow her on Facebook at facebook.com/MissSamanthaHawkins