Iowa State University
College of Human Sciences


Inside Human Sciences

Human Sciences dollars for scholars to increase by 63%

May 5, 2008

Human Sciences dollars for scholars to increase by 63%

College to offer 248 undergraduate scholarships in 2008-09

By Scott Schrage

Since its formation in 2005, the College of Human Sciences has focused on improving the quality of people’s lives – starting with its students. The college will continue this tradition by increasing scholarship funding for the 2008-2009 school year.
 
The college recently announced that it has allocated $429,850 for undergraduate scholarships next year, an increase of 63 percent over 2007-2008. The funds will be distributed into 248 scholarships – 36 percent more than this year.
 
“We feel that’s particularly important … because many of our students choose to serve humanity in fields such as dietetics or teaching, fields that may not necessarily be as financially remunerative as others,” said Jackie Blount, the college’s associate dean of undergraduate education. “In some ways, our students are making a sacrifice. Scholarship opportunities are a way of helping to make all of that a little bit more right.”
 
Blount noted that the college feels a “moral imperative” to limit the financial debt of its graduating students, expressing her gratitude that donors – whom she credited as the driving force behind the scholarship growth – feel the same way.
 
“They really are the primary people responsible for it,” she said. “Our donors carry that strong conviction: the need to support students who wouldn’t otherwise have opportunities, or to reward students who’ve been exceptionally motivated and able.”
 
Because of their support, the college looks to advance in several areas that Blount sees as essential to its success. “For one thing, we’re able to attract much more diverse students,” she said. “We feel like it’s extremely important to be able to offer real opportunities to study here for students who may come from modest backgrounds. It enriches our students’ experiences tremendously to have as much diversity among our students as possible.”
 
Blount has also seen the impact that financial aid has on the day-to-day lives of students. “They don’t have as much of a burden working or doing other things to support themselves,” she said. “I’ve seen that our scholarship winners … end up participating in activities in the college much more actively than the students who don’t [receive them]. Scholarships do seem to support students so they may more freely pursue their interests and grow.”
 
According to Blount, the development of endowment funds – which accrue annual interest that is allocated toward scholarships and other academic advancements – has proven vitally important to the cause.
 
“Most of these scholarship funds exist in endowments,” Blount said. “[Dean] Cheryl Achterberg and Kelly Hanfelt – our Iowa State Foundation staff [member] for the college – have emphasized the importance of support for scholarship endowments.”
 
The college and Foundation have made concerted efforts to ensure that donors’ specific scholarship guidelines are met. “We want to be sure that we honor the donors’ wishes as exactly as we possibly can,” said Blount. “We try to make sure that we match up the students as carefully as possible with every donor’s requirements. It’s exacting, important work.”
 
Moreover, the college is looking at ways to juggle donors’ wishes with the needs of the college’s many departments, which has proven more challenging since the College of Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) and College of Education merged to form Human Sciences.
 
“It’s a really important question. More of the money is available for students in the three departments from the old College of Family and Consumer Sciences,” Blount said. “Nonetheless, there is an increasing number of scholarships that are available to students across the whole college. I think … as the college becomes much more unified throughout, donors are more interested in creating new scholarships or re-establishing old ones in terms that open them up for students across the board.”
 
The college’s scholarship committee has also tried to strike a balance between increasing both the number and size of available scholarships. “We’re continuing to negotiate that balance,” said Blount. “As the scholarship amounts in each pool have grown, we’ve tried to increase the amount of each scholarship, because … the costs of living [and] higher education have gone up. We’re also still mindful of the need to get scholarship money to as many students as possible.”
 
Based on official college statistics, the average 2008-2009 Human Sciences scholarship will represent a $280 increase over this year’s. “We felt like since we had so many additional resources, it was a [reasonable] move to make,” Blount said, noting that nearly every scholarship will cover at least $500. “At the minimum, scholarships ought to cover textbooks for at least a semester, if not for the whole year.”
                                           
The college’s advisors and recruitment coordinator, Darlene Fratzke, have also made an effort to actively promote scholarship availability. As a result, scholarship applications jumped from 339 this year to 538 for 2008-2009.
 
“Within the college, we’ve done a lot to try to make our own process of selecting scholarship winners as fair as possible – and also to get the word out to students as much as we possibly can,” said Blount.
 
New scholarship recipients will have the opportunity to meet the donors who support them at an event held in the Memorial Union this fall. The event will serve as the culmination of a long process that has involved – and will benefit – many people.
 
“The motto for the college is ‘Expanding human potential,’” Blount said. “We try to place people at the center of everything we do.”