WestConn Scholarship—

Offering A Helping Hand To Women Who Need A Fresh Start

By Kaaren Valenta

When Shirley Ferris graduated from high school in 1959, she wanted to be a farm wife and a mother. She never dreamed that one day — after marrying her high school sweetheart and having five children within ten years — she would go to college, become a journalist, and eventually serve two terms as state commissioner of agriculture.

Life has a way of creating unexpected paths, she said.

“I was very fortunate,” she said. “In 1975 I had joined the League of Women Voters in Newtown and met some really nifty women who thought differently than I ever thought. Diana Schwertle Carlisle, who now lives in Vermont, told me to ‘always think in questions and question everything you think.’ Another woman was a financial analyst. I had never thought about things like money. She taught me to think differently.”

About that time, something that appeared in American Agriculturist annoyed Ms Ferris, so she wrote a letter to the editor of the magazine.

“He wrote back and asked me if I’d like to write for the magazine. I wrote a couple of things, which he said were nice but not publishable. He told me to write as if I was writing a letter. That’s when I really started writing.”

She had written about a half dozen articles earning $25 apiece when Crawford Benedict, a professional writer who was the father of a friend, encouraged her to go to college.

“He said I wrote well, but could write better,” she recalled. “It was 1980, I was 39 years old and my youngest child was in middle school.”

Ms Ferris took one class a day for the first semester, using the money she earned from writing.

“I used to bring my lunch and after a while, I noticed that same other women in the lunchroom. Some were women who were recently divorced or widowed, with children to support, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Their stories stuck with me.”

 “I had the support of my family when I started college,” she said. “But many of the students my age were in dire straits. One woman in particular stood out. She had several children. Her husband had left her for another woman — she had no clue that anything was going on. She spent a lot of time weeping. She had started college but she wanted to quit.

“We said ‘You have to start over — keep at it,’” Ms Ferris recalled. “She did. She graduated after me and with honors and went on to law school.”

After graduation in 1986, Shirley Ferris had two different careers. First as writer, then she was tapped to be commissioner of agriculture.

When she was placed on the Centennial Committee for Western Connecticut State University’s 100th anniversary in 2003, her interest in the education of middle-aged women was renewed.

“I thought about the woman whose husband had left her. I thought that maybe there’s another one like her out there. Those women and their stories really touched me. I felt that if I had the opportunity to help someone who was starting over for whatever reason, I should.

“I thought that probably a lot of women could use a fresh start,” she said. “I knew there were a lot of scholarships available – mostly for recent high school graduates — but I wanted a scholarship that would be available for non-traditional women who are in need but don’t fall into other categories.”

She talked with Michael Driscoll, director of institutional advancement at WestConn, about the concept  to work out the details. Together they came up with the concept of the Fresh Start Scholarship.

Ms Ferris contributed $500 to get the scholarship started for the first semester, then pledged to match up to $500 for successive semesters.

It’s not a great deal of money, but I thought it could still be of help to someone,” she said.

Nancy Barton, director of financial aid at WestConn, agrees. She said $500 would be enough to pay for a student’s books for the semester, for example, or scholarships can be combined to help eligible students.

“Books have become so expensive, they have escalated in price. Students are worried about tuition and then when the classes start, they have the book costs to deal with,” she said. “A scholarship like this is very helpful.”

“I go in a bookstore and get sticker shock, especially over books in the science and computer fields,” Mr Driscoll agreed. “Students can’t buy used books because the technology is rapidly changing.”

The Fresh Start Scholarship is need-based scholarship that is available for full-time or part-time undergraduate female students who are 35 to 50 years old. To apply, applicants must be a new first-year student or a returning student at WestConn who has no more than 25 credits. They must have a high school diploma, or general equivalency degree (GED), and although grade point average (GPA) will not be considered for the first semester, the student must achieve a minimum 3.0 GPA to receive the scholarship for the second semester.

“It’s only a little help but sometimes that is all you need — if not financially, then psychologically,” Ms Ferris said.

Anyone who is interested in donating to the Fresh Start Scholarship should contact Michael Driscoll at 837-9627 or driscollm@scsu.edu by the end of February. Women who are interested in the scholarship should contact the financial aid office at WCSU at 837-8580 or email Ms Barton at bartonn@wcsu.edu.