Looking Back and Moving Forward

By Ava MacDonald, Engagement & Impact intern through the UCSC Humanities EXCEL program

“I think my mom is going to faint when I tell her,” I heard from a graduating high school senior after I told him he’d just received a $3,200 scholarship from the Community Foundation. As a student myself, about to graduate from UC Santa Cruz with degrees in Literature and Spanish Studies, it was a perfectly full-circle experience to deliver such good news to someone just beginning their college journey.

I am the Community Foundation’s Engagement and Impact intern through UCSC’s EXCEL program. EXCEL connects Humanities students with workplaces where the skills gained from their degree will be particularly relevant.

From the start, most of my work supported the administration of the Foundation’s annual scholarship program that awards over $400K to nearly 50 students across Santa Cruz County. When I was hired last fall, the Engagement & Impact Team led by Kevin Heuer, had been working hard to prepare before the students’ applications started rolling in. My first tasks were to test the application for bugs, ensure the award requirements and amounts were accurate, and field applicant questions. Having just started, I was a little overwhelmed but looking back, it is incredible to see what that rather abstract work would eventually become!

Dedicated and Passionate Students

I became very familiar with the back end of the scholarships, their prerequisites, the generous community members who started them, and past awardees. Once this year’s student applications began appearing in earnest, I got a sense of the students involved and how impactful this scholarship program is. These students are volunteers and leaders, not only in their families but in community and school organizations. They are motivated to make positive changes in the world. I spent time attaching transcripts, letters of recommendation, and other important documents to the applications, and all of these pieces created a snapshot of a cohort of dedicated and passionate students.

After the applications were submitted, it was time for the scholarships committee to meet and discuss the prospective docket. While helping to prepare the presentation for this meeting, I researched changes on the federal level that might affect students’ ability to pay for school. Proposed changes to Pell Grant requirements will make them more restrictive and the Department of Education has suffered mass layoffs, with nearly 50% of the workforce being placed on administrative leave, which will undoubtedly cause issues processing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and loans. This highlights the importance of scholarship programs like the Foundation’s and their ability to help make higher education a little more accessible financially.

A Full Circle Experience

When I started all the administrative tasks last fall, I could not have imagined how rewarding connecting with scholarship recipients would be over the phone or at their school’s award nights would be. Hearing the excitement in their voices, I understood their feelings of anticipation, as I am feeling it too, just at a different stage in my life.

Header: Ava (right) with her colleague Channing Baker. Channing and Ava worked closely together on the scholarships program.