Thirteen students have won scholarships through the Project Excellence program, which honors the academic achievement of outstanding African American students in the Washington metropolitan area.

Three of the 13 high school seniors will receive four-year college scholarships valued at up to $130,000 each. The other students will receive $10,000 scholarships supported by Project Excellence funds.

MCPS winners of four-year scholarships are:

§ April Colleton, John F. Kennedy High School: Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Rochester Institute of Technology Award (four years full scholarship)

§ John Rawlins III, Albert Einstein High School: Steve and Barbara Newby Cornell University Award (4 years tuition)

§ Gerren Price, Springbrook High School: Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation University of Pennsylvania Award (4 years tuition)

Winners of the $10,000 Project Excellence Scholarship Award are:

§ Kenneth Alston, Albert Einstein High School
§ Oluwasheyi Ayeni, Winston Churchill High School
§ Carmen Clark, James Hubert Blake High School
§ Cynthia Davies-Venn, Richard Montgomery High School
§ Nicole Grant, Quince Orchard High School
§ Regina Joice, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School
§ Timothy Pittman, Montgomery Blair High School
§ Matthew Smith, Watkins Mill High School
§ Sarah Talkovsky, Walt Whitman High School
§ Timothy Visser, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School

Project Excellence was founded by Carl T. Rowan in 1987 to encourage African American students to resist peer pressure against succeeding in school. His son, Jeffrey Rowan, assumed the presidency last year. Since its founding, Project Excellence has made more than $110 million in scholarships available to about 4,300 graduating seniors. Winners are from public, private and parochial schools in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area. The winners were honored at the Project Excellence Awards Banquet on May 10.