|
October 11, 2002
Nancy
Hutton '03 Wins Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Scholarship
|
Photo: Fred LeBlanc
Nancy
("Nan") Hutton '03
|
Media
mogul and former owner of Washington Redskins and Los Angeles
Lakers Jack Kent Cooke dropped out of high school during the Great
Depression to become an encyclopedia salesman to help support
his family. For the rest of his life, he lamented his lack of
formal schooling. When he died in 1997, Cooke created a foundation
that is now keeping others from ending up in the same boat. The
Virginia-based Jack Kent Cooke Foundation announced October 3
that it has awarded seventy-nine students, among them Frances
Perkins Scholar Nancy ("Nan") Hutton '03, Undergraduate
Scholarships. The new awards are earmarked for students who tend
to be overlooked by traditional scholarship programs.
Each recipient will
receive as much as $30,000 a year toward educational costs. The
winners were chosen from about seven hundred applications, and
the foundation awarded about $2 million to students nationwide.
Half the recipients are using the money to transfer from community
colleges to four-year institutions. The other half, juniors and
seniors at four-year colleges, will use it to finish their education.
The awards were the
subject of an article titled "For Atypical Students, Rich
Reward Cooke Foundation Scholarships Target Those With 'Fire
in Their Heart' " that appeared in the October 4 Washington
Post. Quoted in the piece is Matthew J. Quinn, executive director
of the foundation, who said, "Four-year colleges typically
award scholarships to high school seniors, meaning that students
whose promise appears later often miss out on scholarship money."
The Post piece notes that "Quinn described the scholarship
as a 'tap on the shoulder' for students who might have
been ignored the first time around."
Officials at their
schools nominated the applicants, and their applications were
read by at least three academics before the foundation made its
selections. Recipients were chosen based on need, their academic
performance in challenging courses, and their work with extracurricular
groups. Above all, Quinn said in the Post, "The foundation
looked for students who demonstrated a 'fire in their heart'
for learning."
Religion major Hutton
certainly fits the bill when it comes being on fire about education.
"Nan does research with enormous enthusiasm and care,"
says Professor of Religion Jane Crosthwaite. "She responds
to opportunities to read, study, and meet other students with
the same eagerness that she responds to faculty suggestions. She
is just the kind of hungry, generous, and intellectually ambitious
student that Mount Holyoke seeks, whether in the traditional or
the Frances Perkins programs." Professor of History Harold
Garrett-Goodyear describes Hutton as a dream student, noting,
"Working with a student whose intellectual curiosity appears
insatiable, and whose initiative and commitment appear unflagging,
is a faculty member's dream—which is to say that I,
and I suspect, other faculty, regard Nan as a welcome reminder
that our dreams
about our teaching and learning at MHC do come true."
The pursuit of her
dream —to earn a college degree—brought Hutton to South
Hadley by way of a long and varied road. After a childhood spent
largely in New Jersey, she enrolled at Indiana University in Bloomington,
but dropped out before finishing her first year. After hitchhiking
to California, she married, had two sons, divorced, and worked
at a wide variety of jobs—from account management in advertising
agencies to driving a taxicab to selling used cars. Hutton's
last full-time job was as a director of sales and marketing for
an educational publisher in California, a position she held between
1993 and 2000. After being denied a promotion because she did
not have a college degree, she decided it was time to go back
to school.
Since Hutton's
business travel kept her from attending classes regularly at a
local college, she turned to the Internet-based learning at Foothill
College, part of California's community college system. From
airport hospitality rooms, she participated in online classroom
discussions after working twelve hours a day, once even taking
a midterm at 2 am. Despite her hectic schedule, Hutton earned
a 4.0 grade point average, while continuing to set sales records
on the job. "But I soon realized that working was interfering
with my education," says Hutton, who ultimately decided to
become a full-time student. After reading about MHC's Frances
Perkins Program on the Internet, she "never thought about
going anyplace else," but was nonetheless "shocked and
pleased" when she was accepted. She arrived on campus in
the fall of 2000 and describes her years at MHC as "nothing
short of bliss."
The Speaking, Arguing,
and Writing Center assistant; chair of the Weissman Center for
Leadership's student advisory board; and grandmother of five
now aspires to teach at the college level after attending graduate
school (she will be applying to Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to
study American religious history). Thrilled with the scholarship
that will cover tuition and expenses at MHC and provide her with
a stipend, Hutton says she would not have won without the support
of the college she has come to love. "It takes a community
to create an award winner," says Hutton. "There are
so many people who have helped me—from the incomparable professors
and my sister students to the devoted staff who cook and clean,
the administrators, librarians, and techies. I could not have
done this by myself. I am grateful to everyone who has made my
experience at Mount Holyoke such a successful one."
The
counter is
3,068
|
