Six West Virginia University students currently studying in the College of Creative Arts have been awarded $2,000 scholarships from the Valerie Canady Charitable Trust Foundation.
The scholarships are named for Valerie Canady, a Morgantown native and WVU graduate, who was among the 270 people who died in the crash of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988. Authorities later found the tragedy to be the result of a terrorist bomb.
Loulie and William Canady, Valeries parents, present the awards annually. Loulie Canady is a long-time supporter of the WVU College of Creative Arts, particularly the Division of Music. Dr. William Canady is professor emeritus of the Department of Biochemistry in the WVU School of Medicine.
The winners are Laura Lee Colebank of Morgantown , Julie Foster of St. Albans and Sarah Dotson of Morgantown from the Division of Art, and Cher Siang Tay of Malaka, Malaysia , Reinaldo Moya of Gaithersburg, Md. , and Tugba Tatli of Ankara, Turkey , from the Division of Music.
Colebank, an art history major, has traveled to Europe where she investigated art in various media, although her research interest is in Diego Rivera and the Mexican muralists. She speaks Spanish, Italian and French and has studied Latin. Her interest in international art has also led her to study in Belgium and recently in Italy. Her plans are to eventually earn a graduate degree in art history.
Foster is also studying for a bachelors degree in art history and a second major in international relations. She has traveled in Europe and studied in England and also in Mexico as part of the WVU art history course at Guanajuato. A visit to Antonio GaudisSagrada Familiain Barcelona led to research she is preparing for a major project in 2005. She anticipates taking post-graduate studies in object conservation.
Dotson is an art history major whose primary interest is in Italian art, particularly Italian Renaissance Florentine art, which she studied in Florence for a year. She hopes to go back to Italy with a WVU Division of Art program during the summer of 2005. She is studying Italian and also German. Her interests in philosophy, history, literature and languages support her study of the history of art.
Tay is a native of Malaka, Malaysia, and is fluent in Mardarin, Malay, English, and four Chinese dialects. He holds degrees from WVU in jazz studies and also in piano performance with a jazz emphasis. He is currently a graduate student in jazz pedagogy. An exceptional jazz pianist and accomplished classical pianist, he was a winner of the 2004 Young Artist Competition at WVU .
Moya is freshman music performance/composition. He is an excellent violinist and one of the finest composition students to enter WVU in the past 25 years. He is also exceptional academically, and is one of the few students who have entered the WVU Division of Music with a perfect score of 5 on AP Theory exam. He is bilingual in Spanish (his native tongue) and in English.
Tatli is studying for a master of music education degree at WVU , with piano as her principal performance medium. She is an excellent pianist and singer. A native of
Turkey, she speaks Turkish and also fluent English, having attended elementary school in Morgantown for one semester while her father taught at physics WVU on a Fulbright exchange professorship.
Valerie Canady was the kind of person who understood how to build bridges from one culture to another,said Dean Bernie Schultz.Loulie and William Canady have chosen to deal with this most tragic event in their life by awarding scholarships to these young students in Valeries name. The Canady Scholarship is one of the most prestigious awards offered through the College of Creative Arts and each of these student winners is the kind of person who can continue to build bridges among cultures, as Valerie was so accomplished at doing.
Valerie Canady graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from WVU with bachelors degrees in Business and Economics (accounting) and Spanish. She also held an MBA from WVU and a masters degree in Spanish from the University of Madrid, having earned both degrees simultaneously and again graduating summa cum laude. At the time of the crash, she was working in the London Office of the Pittsburgh-based H.J. Heinz Company and was on her way home for the Christmas holiday. She was named outstanding WVU teaching assistant in Business and Economics and in Languages on three separate occasions.
In addition to a high grade-point average and faculty references, the scholarship requires that recipients be fluent in two languages. Mrs. Canady said Valerie was a great believer in everyone speaking more than one language. She was studying French and Italian during the last few months of her life.