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Tarrant County Native Wins 2014 Harold Taft Scholarship

A North Richland Hills native won the scholarship named for NBC 5's first chief meteorologist Harold Taft.

Holly Mallinson is studying atmospheric sciences at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

The award was created by NBC 5 and the Lone Star EMMY Educational Foundation.  Mallinson will be recognized at the Lone Star EMMY Awards Gala in Houston on Saturday, October 25.

Students must attend a Texas university or they must have four years of high school in Texas prior to college. Scholarship applicants and winners must study meteorology, atmospheric sciences or a related field.

Past recipients include Jorge Torres, chief meteorologist at KOB-TV, the NBC affiliate in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Mallinson is researching severe wind climatology at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. After earning her Bachelor's degree, she wants to pursue graduate school and focus on severe weather climatology.

"You'll find few people who think Calculus III is easy and thermodynamics is nothing to sneeze at either," wrote Mallinson in her application letter. "But despite hours spent deriving equations and analyzing skew-T diagrams, I love it.  I majored in atmospheric sciences because I love weather."

NBC 5 /KXAS-TV made the Harold Taft Scholarship possible thanks to a generous donation several years ago. The namesake of the program is Harold Taft, who served as Chief Meteorologist at NBC 5 (WBAP and KXAS-TV) from 1949 until 1991. 

NBC 5 Chief Meteorologist David Finfrock serves as chair of the committee for the Scholarship program.

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