Lou Ann Bergen Endowed Scholarship Fund

Selection statement of purpose
Scholarships within the college are awarded to provide financial support based on need, academic achievement, and/or other specified criteria as determined by the fund agreement for Donor/Gift Funded scholarships or the awarding department for Institutional/Departmental scholarships.
The donor sets the criteria for recipient selection (i.e., financial need, field of study). Scholarships are awarded for one academic year. Institutional funded scholarship selection criteria will be determined prior to review and selection of applicants and will be documented annually.
The Lou Ann Bergen Scholarship was established in 2018 by Kim and Eric Belcher (Advert’79) in honor of Lori Bergen, CMCI’s founding dean, and in memory of Dean Bergen’s mother, Lou Ann Bergen. Lou Ann was born in 1929 and graduated from Marquette (KS) High School and Bethany College. After college, Lou Ann married her husband, Richard, and had two children. She worked in Kansas public schools as a teacher and a librarian and earned a master’s degree in library science from Kansas State University in 1983. Lou Ann passed away in 2018.
Selection Criteria
Applications are reviewed holistically, and selection criteria may include, but is not limited to, academic record, leadership experience, extracurricular involvement, community service, employment, essays, and in some cases, financial need as determined by the FAFSA/CASFA.
Essays: Quality of writing and content are weighed heavily.
Financial Need: The FAFSA and the Colorado Application for State Financial Aid (“CASFA”) are the mechanisms approved for calculating financial need for need-based scholarship awarding.