Mitchell LeGrand faced two options that would ultimately change his life: He would attend college in the fall of 2014 or backpack his way through Europe. His fate rested on whether he would receive the White Bear Lake Rotary Club/Louis Ford Hill/Stan Hill Family STRIVE Scholarship from the Century College Foundation.
The STRIVE Scholarship is given to a White Bear Lake Area High School senior that shows the most improvement in academic scores and continued education throughout the year and plans to attend Century College. At the year-end banquet, LeGrand heard his name called and could not believe his ears. His academic career was about to take off.
The Century College Foundation helps prospective and current students make the most of their education by offering scholarships in diversity, general education, high school, honors (3.5 GPA or higher)/academic achievement, horticulture, nursing, orthotics/prosthetics, science/technology/engineering/math, service learning and more. The unique aspect of the varied programs and scholarships dates back almost 40 years, when J. Stanley Hill first came up with the foundation idea.
“He never had the benefit of a college education and often hitchhiked to work because he couldn’t afford to take the bus,” Jill Greenhalgh, executive director of the Century College Foundation says. “After spending years in his actuary profession, Hill became a widely known citizen of White Bear Lake and decided to create the foundation to help support students who couldn’t afford to go to college.”
Hill cemented the foundation’s mission in the early 1970s, which is “to help transform and enhance the lives of our diverse student population by providing educational opportunities, financial support and advocacy, one student at a time.”
All decisions about who receives a scholarship and how the funds are managed must be approved by the all-volunteer board of directors for the foundation. Members are community and business leaders, and live in the White Bear Lake area or are alumni of Century College. “Our scholarships average about $1,500 per student,” Greenhalgh says. “We provide all types of scholarships, which help students on their path toward self-sufficiency, becoming stronger supporters of the community and aiding the continued educational growth for returning adult students.”
The competition for the scholarships is fierce. The Century College Foundation receives 1,000 applications from interested students each year, and nine out of 10 applicants must be turned away due to a lack of funds. Last year, 118 students received a scholarship and this year 150 recipients are expected. “It is heart-wrenching sometimes when you have so many qualified and deserving applicants that you have to turn down,” Greenhalgh says. “Sometimes we have scholarships that did not get awarded and we have to try and recruit students to apply for them.”
For those who are fortunate enough to receive a scholarship, such as LeGrand, the possibilities for self-discovery are endless. “The scholarship is helping me with all of my education,” LeGrand says. “It is paying for my full year of tuition as well as all the books I buy.”
LeGrand is very grateful for this opportunity and is taking full advantage to find out exactly what he wants to do with his life. “I am focusing on social studies at the moment and am thinking that being a social studies/language arts teacher would be really cool. I love to learn, and these two areas would give me the freedom to move around from topic to topic with the students, but I still have plenty of time to decide on a career.”
