VENTURA : Student Named Truman Scholar

Ventura College student Denise Kato has been named a Truman Scholar, one of 82 students chosen for the $30,000 award.

Kato, 23, will receive $3,000 for each of her two remaining undergraduate years and $24,000 for two years of graduate school. She will transfer to USC in the fall, where she plans to study communications arts and sciences, possibly with a minor in international relations.

Kato, the daughter of Tsujio Kato, former Oxnard mayor, and Sumiko Kato, is interested in foreign policy analysis and hopes to enter the Foreign Service.

After obtaining her bachelor’s degree, Kato said she might attend Georgetown University because of its program preparing students for the Foreign Service.

The Truman Scholarship was established by Congress “as a living memorial rather than a brick and mortar memorial” to former President Harry S. Truman, said Elmer Staats, chairman of the scholarship foundation board.

Truman Scholars must have an interest in working for the government or some other area of public service, Staats said.

Only five of this year’s winners are community college students. Colleges nominate candidates, with the field then narrowed on the basis of grades, activities, essays and interviews.

Kato met with a panel of three college professors, one former Truman Scholar and one 40-year veteran of the Foreign Service.

Winning the award “has made me focus more on what my future will be,” she said, referring to the extensive application and interview process in which panelists grilled her not only on foreign policy issues but also on personal plans.

“I think it’s expanding my mind,” she said.

Kato’s research paper for the Truman Scholarship competition discussed nonverbal miscommunications that she believes might have contributed to the Persian Gulf War.

Kato spent the summer of 1984 in Japan as an exchange student. “It was at that point that I realized that people aren’t very different, even in another country,” she said.

She hopes to concentrate her studies on international relations in the Pacific Rim area. “I would love to spend some time in Japan and live there,” Kato said. Perfecting her Japanese is another goal; she is a fourth-generation Japanese-American.

Kato coaches students in political science, economics, speech, accounting and sociology at the Ventura College tutoring center. She also works two days a week in County Supervisor John K. Flynn’s office doing “a lot of research and a lot of writing,” she said.

Kato was student body president at Channel Islands High School in 1985 and the Southern California district president of the Young Buddhist League.