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Updated June 17th, 2010
Community Scholarship Foundation
Awards $31,000 in Grants
Community Scholarship Foundation members include (from left) Joyce Shuman, Martha Burns, Rose
Chan, Patricia Futia, Analily Park, Wendy Wyatt (president), Marta Sullivan, Rita Gooch, Susan Boyd,
Andrea Walker and Karen Mathison. The CSF awarded more than $31,000 in scholarships to 19 students
this year, including new and renewed awards.
The Community Scholarship
Foundation recently honored its
2010 scholarship recipients at a
luncheon at the home of Wendy
Wyatt, president of the foundation,
and her husband, Phil. This year,
CSF gave more than $31,000 to 19
students, with new and renewed
awards ranging from $500 to
$2,000.
Guest speakers Joel Peterson
and Karen Mathison related their
personal stories about the impact of
community scholarships.
Peterson, a La Cañada Unified
School District Governing Board member and current board chairman
of the Chamber of Commerce,
spoke of being adopted at age 7 by a
family in a small Minnesota town.
He gives credit to a Rotary
International scholarship — that
allowed him to study in Japan — for
directing him toward an internationally
focused career. Since his father
was a teacher with limited means
and the family had four other children,
the scholarship was critical.
“One little scholarship can have a
domino effect,” said Peterson.
Mathison, the current secretary
of CSF and an active contributor to
the La Cañada Unified schools,
talked of growing up in a workingclass
family in Rosemead. She
attributes a $200 Kiwanis scholarship
that she received in high school
for giving her the confidence to be
the first in her family to finish high
school and pursue a college degree
while working full-time. The fact
that her local Kiwanis Club had
believed in her, Mathison said,
helped give her ambition to complete
her college degree.
Ling Rao, a senior at La Cañada
High School who will be attending
the University of Rochester in New
York this fall, received the Don and
Jo Seastrom Memorial Award. She
said that receiving the scholarship
“was a big shock” and that the funding
assistance was much appreciated.
LCHS seniors Katherine
Chapman and Julia Rowe received
the Lt. Todd Bryant Memorial Award
and the John and Jeanne Edwards
Memorial Award, respectively.
Chapman will be attending the
University of Oregon and Rowe will
be at the University of the Pacific.
Rishi Menon, a senior at LCHS,
said the scholarship was “a very
pleasant surprise” and that he was
grateful for it. Menon, who played
Jean Valjean in the LCHS production
of “Les Miserables,” will attend
UCLA in the fall.
Scholarship recipients also
include sisters Corina and Cassandra
Davis, who are home-schooled and
will be attending the College of the
Ozarks in Missouri, and their older
sister Carissa, who is at Patrick
Henry College in Virginia. Corina
and Cassandra spoke of their respective
dreams of opening a boarding
house ministry for college-age
women and of being a nurse in a
CSF
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rural community.
Kevin Schmidt, a junior at
UCLA, thanked the Community
Scholarship Foundation for his
renewed scholarship, saying that
the funds would allow him to travel
to Tanzania this summer to work in
an orphanage and teach at an elementary
school. His brother, Brian,
who attends crosstown rival USC,
said that the CSF scholarships have
really helped their family.
Other scholarship recipients in
attendance included Kyle Johnson
(North Park University), Collin Chersi (Loyola Marymount
University) and Brenda Twohy
(University of Portland).
The Community Scholarship
Foundation was founded in 1964
and has since given more than
$870,000 in scholarships. This
year, the foundation raised more
than $50,000, which will allow it to
provide financial assistance to
more of La Cañada Flintridge’s college-
bound students.
“We wish we could have given
assistance to all of the 30 qualified
applicants,” Wendy Wyatt said. “In
this current economic climate, the
need for the Community
Scholarship Foundation is greater
than ever.”
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