Renaming post titles but only for widgets

Hi there,

I’m currently using “Category Posts” widgets to manage my navigation menus, which are essentially different blocks for each category that each list the most recent posts from that category.

What I’d like to do is be able to rename the way the posts are displayed in the menus, since they are too wordy.

Here’s a link to my site: https://goo.gl/e82Gd

For example, under “Scholarships by Minority” it would make sense for the links under it to be just “African American” and not “Scholarships for African Americans.”

I know I can do custom links in widgets but I plan to add a lot of content and doesn’t seem like a clean solution.

Is there a plugin that would help with this?
Should I be taking a different approach for my navigation/menus?

Thanks a lot!

David