Feature News
Passion for scholarships leads to valuable student resource
Students at Centralia College have a head start when researching new scholarship opportunities. Thanks to the ongoing effort and initiative of two student workers in the college Counseling Center, there is now an exhaustive catalog of available scholarships and tuition aid resources at the tip of our collective fingers.
"Yes," Wall laughed. "We found scholarships for tall people, scholarships directed at skateboarders, scholarships for left-handed students, and we had only scratched the surface." Once the unruly piles of information had been tamed, the two decided to research more scholarships that might help students at Centralia College continue their work here or even earn help at a four-year transfer institution. They continued to sometimes uncover an oddball grant, but most of the additions to the scholarship resource were more broadly based. "We found Web sites that hold a lot of scholarship options for Latino students, African-Americans, and Native Americans," Roman said. "We also uncovered literally thousands of solid mainstream academic and professional opportunities for students."
Paulette Crane, office support supervisor for the counseling center, said the two student workers had grown passionate about the scholarship project, and had built the information into the most complete comparable resource she had seen. "We had uncovered so much vital information," Roman said, "We had to determine just how big we wanted it to grow." Then the twosome took the scholarship project a step further. "We talked with the student population here," said Wall, "and found out what they needed. That's where we concentrated our work."
Today the Counseling Center has an updated scholarship information board, has more than 40 specialized scholarship Web sites containing hundreds of scholarship descriptions, and several binders of individual scholarship listings cataloged by educational specialty and student requirements. As a result of the long hours of work cataloging the mountain of scholarship information, the two now will help any student find a scholarship that fits their needs, if one exists. "If we don't find the scholarship," Wall said, "we'll get them on an avenue they can explore to get the information." Both believe a lot of students will get scholarships they otherwise might never have known about, and that--for the center's engaged student workers--is the best part of all.
For more information about scholarships at Centralia College, see the Scholarships Web page.