HARRISON COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION
SCHOLARSHIP COMMITTEE MEETING
WEDNESDAY JUNE 17, 2014
HCCF MEETING ROOM
Chair Martha Beckort called the meeting to order at 4:03 PM
Members Present: Martha Beckort, Becky Eckart, and Brett Huett.
Members Absent: Kevin Burch and Kim Yackle.
Board chair, Heather Clunie, HCCF CEO Steve Gilliland and Director of Programs Heather
Stafford were also in attendance.
North Harrison School Board Scholarship: Steve updated the group on the North Harrison
School Board Scholarship. He had spoken with and emailed the school board president regarding changes to their scholarship endowment agreement. School representatives mentioned making changes to the agreement and wanted to present their suggestions to the school board. At this time, the school board has not met with HCCF or contacted us with said changes. Martha suggested that if we do not hear back from the school board by September, HCCF will propose changes to ensure that this agreement is in accordance with the Pension Protection Act.
Awards for Valedictorians: Group briefly discussed whether or not the HCCF should acknowledge each of the high school’s valedictorians with some type of “award”, whether that is monetary or not. After some discussion and highlighting that Corydon Central had 23 valedictorians, the group decided no additional recognition needed to be given.
BOF/IUS Scholarships: There are currently no GPA requirements for students applying for a
BOF or IUS renewable scholarship. Once the scholarship is awarded, they must maintain a GPA of 2.5. By consensus, the Committee agreed to add to the scholarship policy: all students who apply for the BOF or IUS renewable scholarships, at time of application, must have a
minimum GPA of 3.25 or higher to be eligible. In addition, the scholarship committee will keep an internal application score of 85 or higher as a tool for selecting these recipients.
Scholarship Essays: Heather S. reported that several foundations only require the top 15-20% of their applicants to submit essays. Essays are either handwritten or typed in a computer lab, and are proctored by foundation staff. Topics are selected at random by the foundation staff.
Utilization of essays in this manner, forces the students to write on demand, demonstrate proper grammar and punctuation skills and free think.
The scholarship committee would like to recommend removing the current “personal insight essay” from the scholarship application and administer a hand written essay topic for the top
20% scoring applicants.
Essays will be proctored by the HCCF staff and topics will be chosen at random each year. Essays will be worth 10 points.
Essay scores will be added to overall application scores to determine the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship recipient, the
Building Our Future Scholarship Recipients and the IUS renewable scholarship recipients.
Ivy Tech: The HCCF has several Ivy Tech endowments which are designed to award scholarships for students in Harrison County attending Ivy Tech. The scholarship applications and selections for these scholarships are currently being handled by Ivy Tech. There is growing
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concern that the amount available to award is growing too large (currently $70,000), and not enough scholarships are being awarded. Steve has contacted Ivy Tech to discuss this issue. There is a possibility of bringing these scholarship applications and selections internally, similar to changes we negotiated with the IUS Education Scholarships.
21 st Century Scholars: There was lengthy discussion by the group on how 21 st Century Scholars should be handled. These students already get a full tuition scholarship to any public university in Indiana. The group questioned whether or not they should even be eligible for ANY of the
HCCF scholarships since HCCF scholarships can only be used for tuition, books and course related fees. 21 st
Century students, who are awarded HCCF scholarships, would most likely not be able to use any of the awarded funds. The Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship cannot exclude 21 st
Century scholars. Heather S. contacted over 10 other community foundations to discuss how they handled this situation. At least 8 of those foundations deduct application points for any student who is a 21 st
Century Scholar. The committee decided they did not want to exclude these applicants completely. The committee recommends adding to the scholarship policy: any applicant who is confirmed by the high school counselor as a 21 st Century Scholar
will have 20 points deducted from their overall application score.
Founders Scholarships: The group discussed the future of Founder’s Scholarships. The original intent of the HCCF was to increase Dual Credit funding which allows students to take college courses at a significantly reduced rate, and decrease the amount of scholarships awarded. The
Scholarship Committee will recommend eliminating general Founder’s Scholarships and
designating $100,000 specifically for Vocational Founder’s Scholarships.
The group will continue to work to clearly define what is categorized as “vocational” and determine how these scholarships will best be marketed to students.
College Cost Estimator: If no general Founder’s Scholarships are awarded, the need for the
College Cost Estimator is resolved. No further discussion was had on using this tool.
Brett Huett left meeting at 6:15PM
School Advisory Scholarship Committees: In order to ensure a fair and non-biased selection of scholarship recipients, all scholarship selections need to occur at the HCCF. The committee suggests the following change to the scholarship policy:
An Endowed Scholarship Selection Committee will be identified annually to select the recipients for all HCCF Endowed Scholarships.
School Corporations will be invited to present to the HCCF a list of three community volunteers who are not employees of the school corporation and three school corporation representatives from each high school. HCCF Scholarship Committee will select from these lists one community volunteer and one school representative who will serve on the committee.
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The Endowed Scholarship Selection Committee will also include 2 HCCF scholarship committee members and 1 past HCCF board member.
Any endowed scholarships that have a specific family, school or community member listed in their endowment agreements will be added to this overall group only for their endowment scholarship selection.
School Volunteers
School Employees
4
4
HCCF Scholarship Committee
HCCF Past Member
Total
2
1
11
Dual Credit: Steve discussed with the group the possibility of adding to the Dual Credit Policy payment for AP Testing fees for Free/Reduced students at each school. Martha felt certain that the State of Indiana already pays each of the schools for this population, so no further action is needed.
The Committee agreed by consensus to accept the Dual Credit Appendix as presented with the elimination of the AP Testing Fees item.
The meeting adjourned at 5:59 pm.
Respectfully Submitted,
_______________________________
Heather Stafford, Director of Programs
Approved By,
_________________________
Martha Beckort, Committee Chair
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