June 4, 2007 — For students wishing to further their education but concerned about the cost, Rotary Club of St. Croix is practically begging them to apply for scholarships.
Some of the scholarships are for study in Georgia. Some are for study abroad — which, by the quirk of the territory's unique status, includes study right here at home. And one is a brand-new scholarship funded by Rotary of St. Croix for study in criminal justice. The Rotary Club of St. Croix held a press conference Monday to urge local students to apply.
“I hope we get inundated with applications,” said Liz Goggins, president-elect of the Rotary Club of St. Croix. “That would be wonderful. I really hope to get these scholarships given out. … Every year there are scholarships that go unfilled because no one applied. Some people may think, ‘I was a B student — why bother? I won’t get it.’ But they are mistaken. Go ahead and apply.”
The new Stanley Farrelly Memorial Scholarship provides $1,000 each to two graduating St. Croix high school seniors for criminal-justice studies. All the other scholarships are available to any qualified student in the territory, but this particular one is earmarked for St. Croix. The scholarships are for the upcoming 2007-08 school year, and the deadline is June 20.
“The scholarships are for criminal justice because Farrelly was very well known as a U.S. marshal,” Goggins said. “There are a good number of fields that fall under criminal justice, and we will be pretty flexible about what qualifies.”
Although applicants should have a grade-point average of 3.0 or better and SAT scores of 1200 or better, the requirements are not inflexible. Others will be considered, too. More information about the scholarship’s requirements and an application are available at www.clubrunner.ca/stcroix. To contact the club’s scholarship chairwoman, Paula Cumbermack, call 340-772-6200 or email her.
Stanley Farrely, who died in 2003, was one of the founding charter members of Rotary Club of St. Croix. He was instrumental in bringing Rotary to St. Croix in the 1950s.
“Junior members like myself were able to gain a lot of knowledge from him and benefit from his wisdom and experience,” Goggins said.
The Georgia Rotary Student Program offers scholarships to international students for study in Georgia. Virgin Islanders qualify. Students live on campus but also have the support of an area host family. The scholarships cover tuition, books, meals and a dorm room. They are only for students who have not previously been enrolled in college stateside and are between the ages of 18 and 25. Around since 1946, these scholarships aim at promoting world peace through understanding, one of Rotary International’s primary missions.
“The Georgia scholarship sponsors are begging people from here to apply,” Goggins said. “So far, nobody has.”
Apply by going online to www.grsp.org and filling out the online form. Call or email Cumbermack for further instructions.
Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships provide another source of financial help. These include the oldest and largest Rotary scholarships and, like the Georgia program, aim to further international understanding and friendly relations among people of different countries. All of these are for U.S. citizens to study abroad. The biggest is the Academic Year Ambassadorial Scholarship, which provides up to $26,000 for an academic year abroad. To apply, call or email Cumbermack or speak to a Rotarian.
Rotary World Peace Scholars is a 21-month, fully covered scholarship program offered to about 70 students worldwide every year. It is for a two-year master’s level degree in conflict resolution, peace studies and international relations at one of the seven Rotary Centers of International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution located at one of seven chosen universities: Duke in North Carolina, Science Po in Paris, Bradford in England, Queensland in Australia, International Christian in Tokyo, Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires and California at Berkeley.
To qualify for the World Peace Scholars program, students must have completed two years of university coursework and get nominated by their Rotary district. The Virgin Islands is in Rotary District 7020, which includes a number of Caribbean nations and is headquartered in the Cayman Islands. Applications are available locally from Cumbermack or from a local Rotary Club. Students should fill them out and return them locally. The local club will select which applications to forward to the district office, which will in turn forward a selection to the national office.
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