By Rory Dulock | Staff Writer
Many academic departments at Baylor offer departmental scholarships or other types of financial aid, yet students might forget about such opportunities and miss the chance to apply. The following academic departments are just some of the options available to students.
School of Education
Scholarship applications for School of Education majors are open until Feb. 29 online.
Dr. Jenifer Johnson, director of recruitment and first-year experience, said the school has many financial aid opportunities for all types of students studying education. According to its website, the school will offer more than $500,000 in departmental scholarships for the next academic year.
“One of the main restrictions is that you have to be an undergraduate education major — any of our majors in the School of [Education],” Johnson said. “They need to submit the FAFSA, the SOE departmental application, and incoming students need to submit the CSS Profile. I think [students] should be able to complete the application within an hour. It shouldn’t take too long. The main thing will be responding to that essay question, so you’ll just want to put a little thought into that.”
Johnson said departmental scholarships help support education majors in their academic journey at Baylor.
“We have a lot of donors who care about teachers going into the field and want to help support these students in different ways as they are trying to achieve this goal of becoming a teacher,” Johnson said. “Because of them, we have the money that we can award. … Anything we can do to support [students] financially to become a teacher, we are going to try hard to do it.”
College of Arts and Sciences – Department of Journalism, Public Relations and New Media
The department of journalism, public relations and new media has opened scholarship applications for students until March 6 on its website.
Dr. Mia Moody-Ramirez, department chair and professor, said the department is fortunate to have a vast amount of scholarships for a variety of students.
“We have more than $200,000 in scholarships, and the scholarships are for our students that range from first-year all the way up to seniors,” Moody-Ramirez said. “It’s based on both merit and also need.”
Moody-Ramirez said the department is responsible for awarding the scholarships, and there are many elements of the application that they look at.
“You don’t have to request specific scholarships,” Moody-Ramirez said. “We look at your application, and based on your background [and] your financial needs, we select the scholarships. We have a broad range of scholarships. Our donors are very generous.”
According to its website, the department of journalism, public relations and new media offers more scholarship money than any other department in the College of Arts and Sciences.
“We do have more scholarship funds than most departments on campus, and it’s such a blessing to be able to give those scholarships to our students,” Moody-Ramirez said. “We want to make sure that our students know about it, and we want to make sure that they apply for those funds.”
Louise Herrington School of Nursing
The Louise Herrington School of Nursing, located in Dallas, also has a variety of financial aid opportunities. However, Endalk Tulu, financial aid manager, said there is no application for departmental scholarships, and every student accepted to the school is automatically considered for them.
“We have about 492 [on-campus undergraduate] students enrolled during the current academic year,” Tulu said. “Out of those 492 students, we have 214 students receiving nursing departmental scholarships. That is about 43% of our students who received additional nursing departmental scholarship, and this is on top of what the FAFSA and CSS Profile gives them.”
Tulu said he works with outside scholarship providers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to provide more scholarship opportunities.
“We try to help our students as much as possible with financial aid and provide additional assistance that can help them,” Tulu said. “For this current academic year, we have 109 different departmental scholarships. So those 109 departmental scholarships, some of them have a very large amount, and some of them only have a couple thousand dollars.”
Hankamer School of Business
The Hankamer School of Business has opened scholarship applications for students until March 1 on its website.
Bradley Lail, associate dean of undergraduate programs, said there are three different groups of scholarships: need-based, merit-based and special-interest scholarships.
“The need-based scholarships we give out to every student that qualifies based on a certain level of need through the FAFSA, so students don’t need to apply for that. That’s a new policy that we put in about a year and a half ago,” Lail said. “Our merit-based scholarships, and there are a variety of those, the application opened up on Jan. 16.”
Lail said on an annual basis, the school offers around $600,000 in departmental scholarships.
“None of these scholarships are for incoming or prospective students; they are only for students that are already in the process of completing their freshman year,” Lail said. “The merit ones, anybody can apply, but given our limited amount of funds … I would say to students, anything below a 3.92, it probably won’t make it in the cutoff for the merit scholarship. You have to have a high GPA.”
Lail said he encourages students to apply for departmental scholarships because the process is easy.
“The story goes routinely as this: There is aid available for students that sometimes they qualify but they have no idea,” Lail said. “It doesn’t take long to apply for these scholarships. These are not ones that require large essays or anything like that, so the hurdle is not very high.”
