Education center plans unveiled during gathering

Montana Horatio Alger scholars were celebrated in a recent ceremony unveiling the Phyllis Washington Education Center at UM.

An estimated 200 people filled the Adams Center Sky Club to overflowing while UM student musicians played, hors d’oeuvres were served and people mingled.

The event brought Gov. Brian Schweitzer to town, as well as Montana Commissioner of Higher Education Sheila Stearns and Superintendent of Public Schools Linda McCulloch. All took the podium, along with UM President George Dennison, to thank Phyllis and Dennis Washington for their philanthropy.

Dennis joined the national Horatio Alger Association in 1995 and by 2004 he had established the Montana Horatio Alger scholarships. The awards are given to students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have shown an ability to overcome adversity in their lives. More than 120 Montana students have received awards since that time and many of them were in attendance at the event.

Two spoke. Melissa Copley, a freshman in business administration from Hamilton, referred to hard times in her childhood and said, “My life is changed forever because of this scholarship.”

Chelsey Old Elk, a sophomore in pharmacy from Crow Agency, said as a high school student she looked at her son and saw the twinkle in his eye and thought, “I’ve got to keep going somehow, some way to make a better life for my son.” Montana Horatio Alger scholars receive a $5,000 scholarship for four years of college, funded jointly by the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation and UM. Dennis Washington also has funded a $2 million graduate fellowship program at UM.

Washington will fund four scholarships, beginning in the fall. Horatio Alger undergraduates may apply. Each comes with an annual $25,000 cash grant, a nonresident tuition waiver, $3,000 toward room and board and designation as a teaching or research assistant.

Schweitzer spoke of being a boy and seeing the USSR’s Sputnik in the night sky in 1957 and his feeling that Russia “had moved a quantum leap ahead of us.”

Then he heard President John Kennedy’s challenge to the nation to put a man on the moon within 10 years.

The country had “a common goal for a common good,” he said. “That president challenged Americans to dream bigger than any president ever has,” he said. The result was 40 years of scientific innovation and an American walking on the moon in 1969.

Schweitzer issued a challenge to today’s students: create an energy future no longer dependent on oil. He noted that Americans are going to war to assure an energy supply. He challenged today’s scientists and engineers to improve conservation methods and create sustainable energy systems so that future generations will not have to secure oil in a dangerous world.

Dennis Washington also addressed his remarks to the youth in the audience, saying they shouldn’t shrink from their hardships. “That’s what gives you discipline,” he said.

He remembered being young and seeing other young people going to the lake in the summer when he had to work. He said breaks come from hard work. “You have to learn to recognize that break,” he said. “They come very subtly. When you get it, grab it. But when you reach for the stars, reach for the lower ones first.”

Washington noted that “life goes in steps. At first I had a goal to survive, support my family, then it was to become the biggest contractor in Montana.” Today Washington Group International provides integrated engineering, construction and management consulting for businesses and governments worldwide. About 25,000 employees work for the company in more than 40 states and 30 countries.

Success comes from “working hard day after day,” he said. “Keep it simple. Basic things in life are the best. Pursue what makes you happy in your inner soul.”

When Stearns took the podium she said, “I come from a family where teaching is not only cool, but patriotic.” She said that the new education center will attract more teachers and predicted that it will draw more young scientists to teaching.

McCulloch talked of her despair a few years ago in seeing Montana teachers who had been laid off being recruited by out-of-state schools. “They wanted them because they were Montana teachers and graduates of the Montana University System,” she said.

Phyllis Washington told the crowd, “The reality of my dream is coming true — helping to make the education of Montanans better for the future.” She thanked her husband for his support and noted that “besides getting my B.A. [from UM] I got a good M.R.S.”

She said, as a former schoolteacher who still misses the classroom, she would say “WOW” to her students. “W means work, O means opportunity and W means you will succeed.”

She was delighted at the end of her remarks to learn that $250,000 had been pledged for the building by Betsy and Warren Wilcox of Missoula.