SOAR News
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Jaza Amchok ’23, current recipient of the Ellen B. Hazzard Nursing Scholarship. (Photo: Rowan Elleman)
Ellen B. Hazzard Nursing Scholarship Promotes Equity in Professional Nursing and Public Health
May 14, 2021
“As the first person to go to college in my family, I’ve come to realize the value and privilege of being able to receive a college education,” says Jaza Amchok ’23, sophomore professional nursing major in UVM’s College of Nursing and Health Sciences, and current recipient of the Ellen B. Hazzard Nursing Scholarship. While Jaza was raised in New York City, her parents were born in a rural area of Tibet with no hospitals nearby and no access to health care. Amchok says one of her goals following graduation from UVM will be to visit Tibet for the first time and use her new expertise to help the people in her parents’ village who don’t have access to immediate medical care. Ellen Hazzard, who earned her professional nursing degree from UVM in 1960, established the Hazzard Nursing Scholarship in 2017 to support students in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences who help to advance the College’s goal of creating a diverse community. After graduating from UVM, Hazzard became a head nurse in pediatrics and earned a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins. As a nurse, Hazzard says one of the most notable inequities she has observed over the years is the disparity in public health across the globe. Jaza Amchok says this gap in access to care is what called her into the nursing profession in the first place.
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Douglas Smith ’85 and Stephanie Ellis-Smith (Photo: Sarah Flotard ’96)
For the Love of Learning: Douglas Smith ’85 and Stephanie Ellis-Smith Establish Scholarship Fund for UVM Students Studying the Humanities
November 20, 2020
At a time when students and their parents are looking to institutions of higher education for the highest immediate return on investment—and selecting fields of study accordingly—one donor couple is helping to ensure that students can still afford to pursue their passions with a major in the humanities. Douglas Smith ’85 and Stephanie Ellis-Smith have established the Rockhaven Scholarship Fund to benefit undergraduate students from Vermont with financial need and academic merit who are pursuing a degree in the humanities. The commitment represents the largest gift to endowed scholarship for students in the humanities in the history of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Both Stephanie and I worry that there's been this huge shift in how people conceive of education as more vocational training than a broader educational exploration of what it means to be human, what it means to know this world that we inhabit and how it got this way—a much broader, deeper understanding of what education's goal and purpose should be. That said, we recognize that higher education gets more and more expensive. It gets more and more out of reach for a lot of people.”
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Jessie Daigle ’22, first recipient of the Margaret Jenkins Pratt Scholarship, is studying for a career as a speech-language pathologist. (Photo: Sally McCay)
Bradford Proud: Scholarship Funds Students from Alumna’s Hometown
November 18, 2020
Harriet Pratt Peterson ’52 passed the days of her youth in Bradford, Vermont helping out around the family farm. Her grandfather was known throughout the area as the “King of Strawberries,” and to save money for college, Peterson spent her summers knelt down in the fertile clay of the Lower Plain picking the sweet, red berries that had put Bradford on the map. When she set off for UVM, as her mother had done in 1923, she was relieved to receive scholarship support to help cover the remainder of the costs. In an effort to return the favor, Peterson has established a $1 million scholarship fund in memory of her mother. As an enduring legacy of the Pratt women who left the farm for bustling Burlington, the Margaret Jenkins Pratt Scholarship provides support to women from Bradford who wish to enroll at UVM and further their studies. The inaugural recipient, Jessie Daigle ’22, was both surprised and relieved to receive the scholarship, just in the nick of time.
UVM Launches $150 Million Fundraising Initiative for Scholarships and Fellowships
October 26, 2020
The University of Vermont's new Student Opportunity, Access, and Recruitment (SOAR) campaign will significantly increase philanthropic support for undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships across all of UVM's colleges and schools.
Donors to UVM have a long history of giving generously to scholarships, and their continued support will be critical to UVM's ability to freeze tuition costs at 2019 levels without sacrificing the outstanding educational experience that has made UVM one of the finest public research universities in the nation. The SOAR Initiative was launched today in conjunction with UVM President Suresh Garimella's announcement that he will propose no tuition increase for the 2021-2022 academic year. This proposal would leave tuition at the 2019 rate for a second consecutive year. In addition, Garimella is recommending no increase in room or board rates—the first time in more than three decades that such a recommendation has been made.