Highline College student Joseph W. Burnett is among a highly motivated, exceptionally promising group of community college students from lower-income backgrounds that is pushing the doors open to some of the nation's top four-year universities with help from a special scholarship.

Each year, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation works to identify the best community college students in the nation to receive its Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship, which awards up to $30,000 per year for up to three years, making it the country's largest, most competitive undergraduate transfer scholarship, according to foundation staffers.

Burnett was one of 46 students chosen for the scholarship from an applicant pool of over 700 students.

He plans to transfer to Tufts University in Boston.

Burnett came to Highline from the U.S. Marine Corps where he traveled the world for eight years as a security guard at embassies and missions.

While traveling he became interested in photography and has held exhibitions of his work in Jerusalem and Santiago, Chile.

At Highline, he taught and guided other students as an instructional intern.

Burnett also received the Highline Foundation Director's Scholarship, the Martin Family Foundation Scholarship and the Shirley B. Gordon Award.

"I aspire to stand in line with the very best of this nation, no longer in the squad bay, but on the graduation stage," Burnett declared.

Noted Joshua Wyner, executive vice president of the Cooke Foundation, "At the top of our community college classes is a tremendous talent pool, largely untapped by elite colleges.

"Many of these students attend community college not because they lack the academic talent for a four-year institution, but because they lack the financial resources.

"While some top institutions - from Amherst College to UC-Berkeley- have caught on, others are missing out. The reality is that community college transfer students are often the most determined, high-achieving students on four-year campuses. What's more, they bring much needed diversity to our most selective higher education institutions."

The 2008 scholarship winners hail from 19 states and 13 foreign countries, including Belarus, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Peru and Russia.

More than half speak at least two languages. They range in age from 19 to 52. Some are parents returning to school after a decade or more outside the classroom.

Nearly one third are the first in their family to attend college.