Stories of Giving
Sorenson Arts Education Gift
Many CEHS faculty agree that arts education in Utah’s elementary schools desperately needs inspired instruction and fresh emphasis. For this reason we’re especially grateful to Beverley Taylor Sorenson for her gift to support arts education for preserve and inservice elementary teachers. Beverley’s generous gift, through the Sorenson Legacy Foundation, will help us begin to address these needs.
Our arts education effort involves a new partnership among the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS), the Sorenson-funded “Art Works for Kids” organization, and school districts. Drawing on USU’s Regional Campus and Distance Education network, we plan to provide preservice and inservice elementary teachers with better access to quality courses and workshops–and to do so in innovative, cost-effective ways. With our land-grant mission, EBLS resources, and distance delivery expertise, USU is well-positioned for statewide outreach.
Dr. Scott Hunsaker, an associate professor in Elementary Education, will direct and coordinate our work. Specifically, we intend to use our ongoing arts education at the Edith Bowen Laboratory School as a model demonstration site and to utilize our distance education network to deliver our courses and workshops in visual arts, music, theater, and dance teaching methods. Artists and arts educators will collaborate to develop revitalized content for each course, adapting resources from Art Works for Kids.
We’re very grateful to Beverley Taylor Sorenson for inspiring and supporting USU’s effort in arts education. For her biography, CEHS reachers can access the nonprofit Art Works for Kids website at www.artworksforkids.org
Judy Silker Gift
Judy Silker (Spec Ed, BS ‘74) has spent more than 30 years using her special education degree to make the world a better place. Now she has generously made a planned gift to help educate future special education teachers.
Judy credits her parents for her own dream of a higher education. She explained, “One of the goals that my parents had was to see that their children went to college. Because of that commitment to themselves and my brother and I, our college edu;cations were their gift to us.”
Judy struggled in the beginning, trying to decide which career path to take, but finally settled on special education. It was a decision, said Judy, that led to “a very interesting and challenging career that took me along many roads.” Throughout her career she has worked with students with a wide range of disabilities. But, said Judy, “the training that I received at USU provided me with the skills that I needed to tackle almost any concern that arose with my students and/or clients.” Because Judy believes the special education program at Utah State is “the greatest” she wants to help other students pursue their dreams. The CEHS is grateful to Judy Silker and others like her who help make dreams a reality.
Peter Kranz
Peter Kranz has enjoyed a successful and eclectic career in higher education. He earned his BA degree in Psychology in 1963, and his MS and PhD degrees in Child and Counseling Psychology in 1965 and 1969, respectively, from Utah State University. After completion his education, Dr. Kranz served for 14 years as the director of several university counseling centers. He currently teaches at the University of Texas, Pan American. Despite the administrative demands associated with the operation of university counseling centers, Peter always pursues his greatest loves-teaching and mentoring students, along with research.
When asked why he chose to support students in the CEHS, he explained that he wanted to give back to a department and college that were good to him. By his own admission, Peter had been a less than stellar student, but the Psychology department believed in him, even providing him with a sizable scholarship. he credits that trust as well as the collegiality of professors and students for giving him a personal and academic education that qualified him to, as he explained, “tackle the world in mental health and academia.”
The Lillywhites' belief in education lives on
At the height of the Depression, Ray L. Lillywhite '35 and his brothers hitchhiked from Brigham City to attend Utah State and earn money for their studies. Because he had to work so hard for his college education, Lillywhite appreciated its value.
He appreciated his education so much that before his death in July of 2004, he and his late wife Eloise ('31) arranged a bequest that would benefit future generations of students for years to come.
The $4.5-million gift from the Lillywhite estate is the second largest private gift in university history. It establishes an endowed chair in the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services and enhances two scholarship funds previously established by the couple.
The endowed chair in speech and language pathology will recruit a leading scholar in the field to the Department of Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education. With a professor of that caliber on board, says college dean Carol Strong '71 '89PhD, department faculty and students will be exposed to the latest research and methodologies in a constantly evolving, highly technical field.
The Ray L. and Eloise Hoopes Lillywhite University Scholars Endowment is aimed at enticing top high school graduates to the university. The Joanne Lillywhite Christensen Scholarship Endowment, named in memory of the Lillywhite's daughter, a speech pathologist who died at age 40 of cancer, assists speech and language pathology majors.
Watch the video "Giving Hope, Changing Lives".
In Memory of Steven
Mesmerized by the simple things in life, Steven Meyrick would watch cloud formations, sunsets and rainbows for hours, and he had a special connection to animals. Though his life was brief and beset with the challenges of disability, Steven made a deep impression on his parents, Stan, a 1959 College of Business graduate, and Judith, a 1962 College of HASS graduate.
Steven outlived his prognosis but his death at age 21 left a big void in the Meyrick household. Remembering how Steven's special education teachers had made school both fun and instructive for him, Stan and Judith decided to establish a scholarship fund in his name for students who major in special education.
Providing a scholarship felt so good to Stan and Judith that they established an education scholarship in memory of Stan's mother, elementary school teacher Agnes South Meyrick. Their most recent scholarship is awarded each year to a business student at the Uintah Basin campus in Roosevelt, Utah.
The Meyricks recently moved to Logan, Utah, after more than four decades of ranching in Spanish Fork, where they also had a meat packing business.
Education has been a priority for the entire family. The Meyrick's three daughters are graduates of USU. The family symbol is a rainbow - in memory of Steven.