A Letter From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

I discovered one of the more pleasant aspects of my job last week when I met with a select group of young men and women on the 48th floor of our New York City headquarters for the second annual presentation of TIME's College Achievement Awards. They were 18 of the 20 winners of $2,500 scholarships and more than half of the 80 finalists, who each received $250, in an intense competition to select this year's outstanding U.S. college juniors. After joining me in congratulating them, TIME Managing Editor Jason McManus warned them of the challenges ahead. "Competent or not, ready or not, you will end up in charge," he said. "It is you, in your time, and those like you of your generation, who will make America work. Or falter."

Judging from the quality of last year's awardees, five of whom were among the nation's 32 Rhodes scholars named in 1986, this year's contingent promises much in terms of that crucial competence. It includes the inventor of a hand- held computer scanner, a part-time Washington lobbyist against federal deficits and a professional ballerina turned budget analyst. Diversity is the rule. Eric Gaidos plots schemes for the exploration of Mars at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. Martha McSally, a biology major and triathlete, helps oversee basic training at the U.S. Air Force Academy. And there is William Anton, who, when not earning straight A's at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, is in the ring training for a shot at the U.S. Olympic boxing team.

Despite their varied interests, the winners seem to have one quality in common: a social conscience. That trait is perhaps best summed up by Louisa Smith, a student of public policy at Harvard-Radcliffe College. Before leaving for Washington with her fellow achievers to meet Vice President George Bush, who had expressed interest in chatting with this year's winners, Smith talked about her commitment to the inmates of the prisons and mental hospitals she has been visiting since high school. "I may never solve all the problems I have seen," said Smith, "but I cannot walk away from them."