Students, donors rise and shine to celebrate scholarships

Submitted by Carla Browning
Phone: 907-474-7778
04/08/08

A new initiative at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has doubled the minimum award for endowed scholarships.

The Chancellor’s Annual Giving Scholarship initiative, generated through donations to the annual giving program, is the latest in an effort to reduce student debt by raising the overall amount of funding available for scholarships. The change means that, beginning next fall, students receiving endowed scholarships will receive a minimum of $1,000. More than 200 donors and students celebrated the initiative and the overall importance of scholarships Tuesday, April 8 at UAF’s 11th annual Scholarship Breakfast.

Nearly 400 students receive more than $750,000 in privately funded scholarships at UAF each year. Melonie Robinett is one of them.

Robinett, the first child in her family of 18 children to attend college, received the Ruth Lister Scholarship for the 2007-08 academic year. This scholarship--awarded to single parents enrolled in vocational programs--will help Robinett advance her paralegal studies at UAF’s Tanana Valley Campus while raising her two young children.

Tuesday’s event highlighted others’ accomplishments as well. Senior Lacey Grosvold moved to Alaska from Montana after receiving a Chancellor’s Scholarship. Now the editor of the Sun Star student newspaper and an intern at KUAC-FM radio, this double major in journalism and economics has already landed a job in Alaska following graduation in May. Music education major Dean Shannon, a junior from Healy, was able to take time off from his job and perform in a UAF Opera Workshop because of a scholarship.

During the event, students and donors also heard from Thomas "Neil" Davis, a retired UAF researcher and noted author. He spoke about the role scholarships played in his own college career and what it means for him to be able to give back now that he and several members of his family support scholarship funds.

Contact: Judyth Wier, associate vice chancellor of development, at 907-474-5750 or via e-mail at j.wier@uaf.edu or visit www.uaf.edu/giving/ for more information.