21 IU Cox Scholars receive total of $747,000

Some scholarships require a high grade point average, others community involvement, while some make students work for it. Literally.

This year IU awarded 21 students the Jesse H. and Beulah Chanley Cox Scholarship for their dedication to academic success while working to earn a portion of their tuition.  
Now in its fifth year, the Cox Scholarship is awarded to full-time undergraduate students who are committed to earning at least 25 percent of the cost of school through employment, said Cox Scholars Coordinator Katy Bradford.

“Jesse and Beulah started the scholarship because they valued education above all and wanted others to be able to attend school,” Bradford said. “But they also valued work.”

Because of this, the scholarship only covers 75 percent of the cost of attendance for an in-state academic year.

For Cox Scholar and junior Casey Seizys, this is a welcome reprieve from the previous years of loans and out-of-pocket expenses.

But Seizyz, a biology major, is accustomed to working for what she has and attributes her work ethic to her parents.

“When I started working when I was like 11 they started making me pay for stuff on my own,” Seizys said. “They really prepped me for college.”

The scholarship, which is renewable for three years, is open to in-state students at IU Bloomington and IU-Purdue University Indianapolis with a minimum 3.0 GPA, who have completed at least 12 credit hours.

Each year 21 students are chosen as recipients – 14 from the Bloomington campus and seven from IUPUI.

Students are eligible to receive the scholarship beginning their sophomore year once they pass the application process, Bradford said.

To qualify, prospective students must submit W-2s from the previous year showing they earned the required amount of money to cover attendance.

Involvement in the IU community is also a big aspect of the program, senior Julie Singer said.

“They’re looking for students with high level involvement and maintaining paying jobs while in school,” Singer said. “I’m a representative for Congress for IUSA, I’m a Union Board director and I have two majors and a minor and I was working.”

The most important thing, though, is who the person is as a whole, Bradford said.  
“We’re about the whole person, and we don’t just look at GPA or test scores,” Bradford said. “Do they get it? Do they get who Jesse was and what he was about?”
The scholarship is the largest individually funded program available for students at IU, totalling more than $747,000 for the 2009-10 academic year. 

“It’s amazing to think a couple who didn’t have children of their own and had the wealth that they did,” Bradford said. “What they most wanted was for others to have an education and not struggle as much as they did.”