Students use their money to create scholarship fund
Students from Utah State University’s parks and recreation department were involved with the 2002 Olympic Winter Games and raised a large sum of money to provide scholarship support.
Art Jones, department head for health, physical education and recreation, said, “I contacted the Salt Lake Olympic Committee to see if we could arrange for our students in HPER to be involved in the Winter Games.”
SLOC was eager to have college-age students participate, and they gave the students an opportunity to work as event services coordinators in the various venues around Salt Lake City.
“We had about 70 students sign up through the department. Each student was paid an hourly rate with the agreement that if they fulfilled their contract, that they would be given an additional dollar for each hour that they had worked,” he said.
All of the students then got together and decided to donate the extra dollar to the department to establish a scholarship endowment.
Jones said they have thus been able to raise $10,000, which will be used to provide scholarship support to HPER majors in the future.
Tuesday morning the parks and recreation department held a ceremony for those students who donated their wages. Two students who donated their earnings talked about what it meant to them.
Courtney Hutchins, a senior parks and recreation major, said, “How many times do we as students get the opportunity to create a scholarship for other students?”
Nate Trauntin, also a senior parks and recreation major, said, “It was a great experience to see how to do a large event and what not to do.”
Jones said, “This is a rather historical moment. This is the first time in this department where students have decided to fund their own endowment.”
Hutchins said it was also great to see people from all over the world.
A plaque will be displayed in the HPER foyer with the names of the students who donated a portion of their wages and others who donated money in addition to what the students gave.
The name of the scholarship will be the HPER Olympic Scholarship.
-stacipete@cc.usu.edu